A Texas woman who had an ongoing affair with her nephew before fatally stabbing him was found guilty of murder Thursday – but was sentenced to just two years in prison for the “sudden passion” killing.
Andira Abdelaziz, 37, had previously admitted stabbing Mohammed Abdelaziz, 25, telling a jury last week she did so in self-defense after her nephew pounded on her door on Aug. 9, 2016. The woman’s attorneys claimed her nephew verbally and physically abused her throughout their secret three-year relationship, the San Antonio Express-News reports.
Abdelaziz had faced up to life in prison, but jurors took less than two hours to dole out the minimum sentence of two years after determining that she killed her nephew – whose uncle she married at age 14 – in “sudden passion,” thereby reducing the maximum sentence to 20 years.
“She was trying to survive,” defense attorney Liza Rodriguez told the jury. “The state didn’t contest that she was a victim of domestic violence. Usually the woman is the one who is dead … If you believe she acted in fear for her life, find that she did this in sudden passion.”
Andira Abdelaziz would have been killed by her nephew had she “not reacted with the instinct to survive,” Rodriguez said. Her nephew had sent dozens of text messages warning that he was coming to beat her, repeatedly calling her a “daughter of a whore” in the process, defense attorney Mike McCrum said.
The guilty verdict rocked Abdelaziz’s bitterly divided Palestinian-American family, leaving her son Mohammed, 19, stunned and unable to speak, while her husband, Karim, yelled in Arabic toward the other side of the courtroom, where Mohammed Abdelaziz’s relatives were sitting, according to the newspaper.
Mohammed Abdelaziz’s father, Aziz, said there was no chance that the family would reconcile.
“I have lost my son,” he told the newspaper. “Nothing will bring him back. I cannot say what should be done with Andira. Andira is a human being and me and my family don’t wish harm on anyone. We leave it with God.”
He continued: “Islam asks us to forgive but also says if a life is taken, then you take a life, but I am not going there.”
Prosecutors, meanwhile, weren’t seeking a specific prison term for Andira Abdelaziz, who previously admitted stabbing her nephew with a kitchen knife when he attacked her again – after Bexar County sheriff’s deputies responded to her home and released him from handcuffs.
“There is no number of years that will bring solace to his family, no number of years that will let his mom hold her son again,” prosecutor Clayton Haden said. “Somewhere between two years and out here [life in prison], there is justice.”
Haden previously disputed Abdelaziz’s self-defense claim, suggesting she was angry that her nephew told her he was going to reveal their romantic relationship to the rest of their family, KSAT reports.
