A Melbourne woman has been jailed for trying to slit her elderly aunt’s throat in an ISIS-style execution after making her get on her knees and pray to Allah.
Leanne De Baize, 42, was last Thursday given a sentence of six years and six months’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of four years by Victorian County Court Judge Patricia Riddell, who found drug-fuelled paranoid delusions caused the attack, the Herald Sun reported.
De Baize, who pleaded guilty to intentionally causing serious injury, making threats to kill, theft and unlicensed driving last month, attacked her 74-year-old aunt after the pair went shopping together and ran errands in Dandenong in February last year.
The court heard the unemployed ice addict hit the older woman in the head with a chopping board after making her kneel and pray, took out a knife and said “I’m going to cut your throat” and tried to behead her, but the bread knife was too blunt and she repeatedly stabbed and slashed her aunt with another knife instead.
She also tried to suffocate her victim and tied up her hands, twisting and breaking one of her fingers while the elderly woman cried and said “it’s enough, I’m dying Leanne”.
The victim was taken to hospital with lacerations to her neck, bruises, concussion, and now suffers from PTSD, vertigo, dizziness, memory loss, panic attacks, nightmares, and shoulder, back and wrist pain, the Star Journal reported.
Despite De Baize being caught on a prison phone call saying the attack “wasn’t because I was on drugs” and that she had been thinking about killing her aunt for more than a year, Judge Riddell said it wasn’t proven the attack was premediated.
“It’s clear you were not in your right mind when you committed these offences,” she told De Baize in sentencing, but added “violence such as this against an older, vulnerable woman cannot be tolerated”.
Judge Riddell said the attack was a “tragic reflection of the impact of drugs” and the court heard a character reference from De Baize’s mother who said her daughter started using drugs after becoming the victim of abuse, and was “not beyond redemption”.
De Baize, who claimed to be drug free after spending 1.5 years in jail, will face court against next month accused of deliberately ramming a cyclist off the road three months before the attack on her aunt.
Header image: Leanne De Baize (X).
