DOHA: A young American woman found murdered in her apartment here on November 14, 2012 was sexually assaulted before being stabbed to death, the court hearing the case has been told.
A Kenyan security guard of the building in which the victim, Jennifer Brown, was staying is the accused in the sensational
murder case.
A doctor who prepared the medical report told the court she had seen the body of the victim some 12 to 16 hours after her death, on November 15, 2012.
“I found marks on her neck suggesting attempts to strangulate her but the marks were not deep,” said the doctor.
Her head had been banged into something hard — probably a wall — but that didn’t cause internal bleeding. So that wasn’t the cause of her death. She was stabbed in the chest thrice, on the upper part and to the right, which injured her lung, leading to a loss of some two litres of blood.
“This stopped her blood circulation, as a result of which she died,” the doctor said. Besides, there were scratches on her body that suggested that there was violence and sex, the doctor told
the court.
Police claimed in their report that the accused came to the victim’s room to help her fix something. He pushed her against the wall and pressed her throat to force her to agree to sex. She agreed under duress, local Arabic daily Al Raya reported yesterday.
However, he stabbed her after the act. The accused told investigators that the victim came to his security guard’s room at 6pm. She began shouting, asking him to get some adhesive tape to wrap around some wire in her room, the accused said. “She was yelling at me, blaming me for not fixing the problem, so I felt bad,” said the Kenyan. She also complained of some problem with her Internet. He said he banged her against the wall in rage.
The court heard some five witnesses from the Criminal Investigation Department who had inspected the crime scene. They said the accused had wrapped the knife with which he had stabbed the victim in newspapers and hid it on the terrace of the building. The court adjourned the hearing until December 30. The Peninsula
