Impala Park man gets 12 years for knife attack on ‘abusive’ husband
An Impala Park man, with no previous convictions, was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment, in the Boksburg Magistrate's Court, on August 31, on a charge of attempted murder.
Daniel Dowling (31) pleaded guilty to stabbing a Beyers Park man in the back with a knife while the man was asleep in bed, next to his wife, at around 4am on November 26, last year.
Dowling claimed the man’s wife had asked him to kill her husband, who was allegedly physically abusive towards her. He agreed he would scare the husband, not kill him.
The vicious attack left a bloody trail through the townhouse and into the garage area as the victim, bleeding profusely from the stab wound, got out of bed and chased his attacker.
Recounting the events of the previous evening, leading up to the attack, Dowling said in court he had been at a local casino with the victim’s wife on the evening of November 25.
She again asked him to kill her “abusive” husband. When the two returned to the wife’s house at around 3am, she told him to wait in the car in the garage until she had gone to bed. She left the inter-leading door to the house from the garage unlocked, Dowling said.
Thirty minutes later, Dowling entered the house from the garage, went to the bedroom where the couple were asleep and stabbed the husband once in the back.
He then dropped the knife on the bed and ran out of the house, with the seriously injured husband in pursuit.
The husband confronted Dowling armed with two household knives and Dowling said he picked up a pool cue to hit the knives out of his hands. He then picked up one of the knives and stabbed the husband in the hand.
Dowling fled the scene in the wife’s car and went to the premises of the couple’s daughter, in Caravelle Street, Impala Park, where he had been staying.
He was arrested there on the same day.
Dowling admitted to using one of his own knives to stab the husband in bed. He was a knife collector and had worked as a chef and said he had left the knife in the couple’s garage prior to the attack.
The court declared Dowling unfit to possess a firearm and ordered him to serve two thirds of his sentence before being eligible for parole.
Magistrate Abel Shilbana presided and Maria Fyfe appeared for the state.
