The doctor who first examined the violently disfigured girl from Stara Zagora: "I have never seen wounds made with such cruelty"

Dr. Stoyan Petrov was the first doctor to examine the 18-year-old injured girl, who was violently disfigured by an assailant, who slashed her with a knife and inflicted wounds that required 400 stitches. It took the team of doctors three hours to stitch all the wounds. He says that in his nearly 40 years of experience as a doctor, this is the first time he has seen such a sight.

"Ugly job, ugly... It wasn't life-threatening condition she was in, but cleaved - side-by-side parallel wounds... I've seen wounds, but wounds made with such atrocity... I don't want to remember this thing. She was disoriented in a state of shock. I asked her what happened - she couldn't explain much. She was not very adequate. At the time of the incident, the perpetrator was wearing a mask and then when she came around, she was with the wounds, half her head was shaven," says Dr. Stoyan Petrov.

The doctor pointed out that stitching the wounds took 3 hours.

"We do not count the stitches, but making the most elementary calculation, they were about 20 wounds, long enough to take 20 threads each. We don't count the stitches."

He said the perpetrator first hit the girl on the head, after which she went into a concussion.

"Because normally a person being attacked would kick out and struggle to defend themselves, but in this case the girl’s wounds were in straight lines and of the same depth, from what you might really think was a carpet cutting knife. She hadn't lost a lot of blood, because being in a state of shock, there's not a lot of strain on the blood vessels, she wasn't bleeding much."

The doctor predicted that the girl would suffer the effects of the violence all her life and could not comprehend how anyone could do such a thing.

"An absolute freak, a psychopath. I don't see that a normal person could do this, the doctor said."

Unprecedented cruelty: Man disfigured 18-year-old girl with a carpet knife, released on bail

The victim’s lawyer described as inadequate the initial expert assessment that the injuries were minor. He has remarks to the instructions given by the Prosecutor’s office in the case.

"If the on-duty doctors who admitted the girl had been interviewed at that very moment, the severity of the injury would have been determined at that very stage, given the large blood loss - one of the signs is a temporary disorder of health, dangerous to life," said Delyan Slavov, the victim's lawyer.

The accused, Georgi Nikolaev, has told his lawyer he was not involved in the attack. According to the defence lawyer, the 26-year-old man has an alibi for the day of the crime. And the other explanations: the knife with which the girl was cut was not found in the home of the arrested, but in the girl's apartment. There were no fingerprints on the knife.

"My appeal is: let the judicial system work in peace. I can't believe that judges are coming out to explain their acts and what they had to rule," lawyer Petko Kanev said.

Georgi Nikolaev's defence will appeal against the detention order imposed on him. The hearing is scheduled for 9 August.

Court remands man accused of slashing 18-year-old girl with a knife and inflicting injuries that required 400 stitches

Thousands came out in protests across the country against violence