Saudi student: ‘I tried to kill her… I was not aware of what I was doing’

A Saudi student charged with attempted murder in Canada has admitted that he tried to kill the victim adding that he didn’t know what he was doing at the time of the incident.

“I tried to kill her,” he said. “I was not aware of what I was doing at the time.”

Nineteen-year-old Thamer Hameed Almestadi has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon in the 2016 attack on a fellow student, Mary Hare, who was left with serious injuries including a five-inch-long cut to her throat.

In an hours-long interview which was played in court during his trial last week, the University of British Columbia (UBC) student said: “Tell her I’m sorry… Tell her I made a mistake … I didn’t even know why her.”

He said he was overwhelmed by his studies and could no longer think straight. “If you read something and your mind is thinking something else, you understand differently.”

Adding that he even began to see things that weren’t real.

“At that point I thought Mary was the devil,” he said.

He said he had visited hospital in an effort to control his thoughts and emotions.

In her testimony, Hare, 20, said that she had only met Almestadi once briefly one week before the attack in her dorm room.

“I fought him off. I did everything I could have done,” she said.

She said she screamed calling for help and two other female students arrived and saved her, but she had several wounds.

The investigator said that at one point during the interrogation, Almestadi offered to pay for Hare’s recovery and medical costs. “She never did anything to me,” he told the officer. “I know what I did is wrong.”

The trial is ongoing.