A Houston woman convicted of fatally stabbing her boyfriend with a 5 ½-inch stiletto heel told jurors Thursday that she killed him to save her own life during a brutal fight in which she was chased down, knocked into a wall and thrown over a couch.
Ana Trujillo took the witness stand for the first time in the two-week trial as part of the penalty phase, which will decide her sentence.
During more than five hours of rambling testimony by mid-afternoon, Trujillo said that she had been repeatedly abused by men, including sexual assault by her first husband.
Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle via AP
The jury convicted Trujillo on Tuesday of murder in last June's killing of her boyfriend, 59-year-old Alf Stefan Andersson, at his home. Prosecutors say she pinned him down and stabbed him at least 25 times with the heel of her shoe. Trujillo and her lawyers said she acted in self-defense.
Trujillo told jurors Andersson became enraged and she fought for her life during a fight that lasted more than an hour. She said she tried to calm him down, but Andersson started yelling at her and Trujillo realized she could not talk him down.
"I became frightened. I did fear for my life. I felt he lost it," she said, adding that she started striking him with the shoe anywhere she could.
"Why did you keep on hitting him?" her attorney Jack Carroll asked. "He wouldn't let go of my leg. The pain wouldn't stop," she said. Trujillo said that at first she hit him on his back and on his arms, then on his head as a last resort.
"I had no idea I was hurting him that badly," she said. "I reached over and said, 'Oh God, what happened?' I reached over and my hands were full of blood."
Trujillo told jurors she had been sexually assaulted by her first husband and told jurors that another boyfriend had kicked her in the stomach when she was pregnant, resulting in a miscarriage.
Trujillo also told jurors a friend in 2009 had tried to rape her in his apartment, pinning her down and that she used the only weapon within reach — a candlestick — to fend him off.
Trujillo's former friend testified Wednesday that it was Trujillo who knocked him out with the candlestick in an unprovoked attack. No charges were filed related to that incident.
On Wednesday, prosecutors presented 19 witnesses during the trial's punishment phase. Most of the witnesses detailed Trujillo's criminal history or firsthand experiences in which she became violent toward them when she drank.
Trujillo was arrested twice for drunken driving, once in 2008 and again in 2010. She had been drinking the night of Andersson's death but her blood alcohol level was not tested, according to testimony.
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