Man falls down stairs and later dies of injuries: wife who left him lying acquitted of guilty negligence (Mechelen)

The Mechelen court acquitted a 66-year-old woman from Mechelen for guilty negligence. The woman was on trial because she had only given her partner, who had fallen down the stairs during the night, a blanket and a pillow and left him lying down. She called an ambulance the next day.

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On December 11, 2022, JG and her boyfriend had dinner at a brasserie. There was also drinking and the woman went home faster than the man. “She was already in bed when the man came home. When he got home he fell down the stairs. The noise and shouting woke her up. She went to look and found him at the bottom of the stairs with a bloody face and a gaping wound at the bottom of his head,” prosecutor Nele Poelmans summarized the facts.

According to JG, it was not the first time that the man was drunk and fell. According to her, he simply slept off the previous incident and got up again a few hours later. “That particular evening in December she brought him a pillow and a blanket, but otherwise she left him to his fate. Then she simply went back to bed, took sleeping medication and fell asleep again.”

It wasn’t until many hours later – shortly after 2 p.m. – that she got up and saw her partner still at the bottom of the stairs. “He was spouting gibberish at that moment. Only then did a bell ring that there might be more going on and she called an ambulance. At the hospital, doctors determined that the man had a skull fracture and a ruptured liver. He was also severely hypothermic and had lost a lot of blood.”

Request for help ignored

The victim died in hospital four days later. The Public Prosecution Service emphasized that the woman was well aware that she acted wrongly. “There was clearly a serious danger situation that night. And what made everything worse was that she ignored her boyfriend’s request for help. She left him lying down, took sleeping pills and let him die for another half day,” Poelmans grumbled.

The Public Prosecution Service asked the judge to first appoint a psychiatrist to examine the woman’s mental state. However, the court did not respond and ultimately acquitted the woman of culpable negligence.