Shopkeeper Nirupa Patel was slashed on her face; forced to give up business.
AB Wire
In a bizarre case, an Indian-origin woman and shopkeeper in Luton, England, was brutally attacked and slashed on her face by a man on the same spot where her husband was murdered six-and-a-half years earlier.
Nirupa Patel, 56, was slashed in the face with a shard of glass during a sustained attack by Tomasz Jaworksi early on Christmas Eve morning in Moon’s Newsagents, Luton, reported the Sun on Thursday.
Jaworksi, 31, repeatedly told her he wanted to kill her, and grabbed her around the neck so forcefully that she thought her eyes would come out of their sockets. He kicked and punched her in the face and jaw, pulled out her hair and smashed her head repeatedly with beer cans and tins from the shop.
Patel, who is 5ft-tall, ended up of the floor in the same place that her husband was found murdered. Jaworksi, who had been in the shop previously, saw the photograph of Mr. Patel and the candle that his wife lit every day in his memory. He told her: “I am going to send you to him.”
She set off the panic alarm and the police arrived and arrested Jaworski, who is originally from Poland. Jaworski cannot apply for parole until he has served 8 years and will be on licence for the remainder of his sentence, said the Sun report.
Mrs. Patel’s husband Jashbai, 59, who was known as Mr. Moon, died in the shop after being stabbed eight times by robber Richard Dettmer on June 14, 2009.
Dettmer, who got away with around £20 in coins, was jailed for life in December that year.
Jaworksi, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Mrs. Patel and two counts of causing actual bodily harm.
As a result of the attack and the memories of her husband’s murder, Mrs Patel has been forced to give up the business she had run for 33 years.
In a victim statement, she said: “I lost my livelihood and my chance to keep his memory alive. For me work was everything. It wasn’t just work it was my life.”
She said she had made a shrine for her husband in the shop and lit a candle in his memory every day. Whatever happened to the defendant, she said it would still be a life sentence for her.