Swiss man stabbed to death

PATONG: Dokkaew Niyonrum, 38, from Buri Ram, has been charged with the murder of a 40-year-old Swiss national named by police as Christoph Albert Hartmann. Dokkaew is alleged to have stabbed Mr Hartmann in the chest during a fight in their home on Sai Nam Yen Rd in the early hours of Sunday morning. Pol Maj Komdech Poathong of Patong Police Station told the Gazette that he received a call from a police officer at 5:50 on Sunday morning. The officer explained that Dokkaew had approached him and told him that she had just stabbed her boyfriend in the chest and needed transport to take him to Patong Hospital. A doctor at the hospital, after inspecting Mr Hartmann’s wound, considered it too close to the heart for Patong Hospital to deal with. He then sent Mr Hartmann to Wachira Hospital where, he believed, the wounded man would have a better chance of survival. Mr Hartmann died from loss of blood in the operating theater at Wachira. In her statement to the police, Dokkaew said that, during an argument, Mr Hartmann had hit her and kicked her. Acting in self-defense, she said, she stabbed him once in the chest. Seeing him fall bleeding to the floor, she ran to get help. Dokkaew added that she and Mr Hartmann, who had lived together for a year, had argued frequently. She told investigators that she had formerly been a prostitute, but that, as she got older, business had fallen off. So she agreed to live with Mr Hartmann, but had had to put up with his violence. Maj Komdech said that when arrested Dokkaew’s mouth was bleeding, her face was bruised and her index finger was broken. She is being held in Phuket Provincial Prison awaiting trial.