A FRUSTRATED suitor has been jailed indefinitely after he stabbed a woman who spurned his advances.

Immediately after his knife attack put Katharina Samuel in intensive care with a collapsed lung, George Edward Lowe, 55, told police: “I prodded her. I poked her in the back."

Then he falsely accused the 48-year-old Acomb woman, who later died from a suspected drug overdose, of provoking the attack and stealing £50 from him. In reality, he had stabbed her “totally out of the blue” as she was boiling a kettle to make a drink, said Tamara Pawson, prosecuting at York Crown Court. He had wanted her to be his girlfriend, but she only wanted to be friends.

In previous, separate incidents, he had threatened her with a rolling pin and pushed a knife against her chest.

He also told a neighbour “I am going to knife her” and talked about stabbing her a number of times in early 2009.

Miss Samuel died a few weeks after the attack, but the court heard there was no medical evidence that Lowe was responsible for her death.

“Miss Samuel had regarded you as a friend and had for some time acted kindly towards you,” the Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst, told Lowe.

“She had tolerated your sometimes eccentric behaviour, your heavy drinking and your threats to her. You, however, frequently misunderstood how far she wanted to take your relationship. You became obsessed with her."

He said Lowe was a danger to any woman he felt romantic about, particularly those who did not share his feelings.

He jailed Lowe, of Wains Road, Dringhouses, indefinitely for public protection and ordered he serve at least two and a half years.

Lowe pleaded guilty to wounding Miss Samuel with intent to cause her serious harm. Miss Pawson said Miss Samuel spent two days in intensive care following the attack, and had been friends with Lowe for two and a half years.

DC Fiona McEwan, of York Police, said she wished Miss Samuel could have been in court to hear the sentence.

“She supported him and he took advantage of her actions,” she said. For Lowe, Diane Nixon said “something just clicked” when he stabbed Miss Samuel, who was visiting his house, and he had been frustrated that she didn’t want to be his girlfriend.

Since the break-up of his marriage he had been “yearning for a loving relationship”, but his drinking caused problems.

Miss Nixon said Lowe was remorseful, but the judge said it was a “superficial” remorse.


Stabbing trauma linked to death

KATHARINA SAMUEL’S former partner Peter Robinson said the trauma of the stabbing may have contributed to her death.

She spent a week in York Hospital after the attack before returning to her home in Windsor Garth, Acomb. She was last seen alive on June 9 and was due to return to hospital for a scan.

On June 10, concerned she did not answer her phone, Mr Robinson tried to get into her flat, then called the council to get in. She was lying in the kitchen and may have taken an overdose. She had been a heroin user in the past.

He told The Press: “She had been doing well, but a few days before she died, she had been feeling low and I think she must have taken it one more time. I think it may have been the trauma of the incident that made her do it.”

The Crown Prosecution Service considered and rejected charging Lowe in connection with her death.

An inquest into Miss Samuel’s death was opened and adjourned in June.