An Oxford University medical student may not go to jail for stabbing her boyfriend, because of her potential as a heart surgeon.
Twenty-four-year-old aspiring surgeon Lavinia Woodward punched her boyfriend and stabbed him with a bread knife during a drug-fuelled fight at her university campus of Christ Church College, the Oxford crown court heard.
Woodward admitted to wounding the Cambridge University student, who she met on dating app Tinder, the Guardian reports.
"It seems to me that if this was a one-off, a complete one-off, to prevent this extraordinarily able young lady from not following her long-held desire to enter the profession she wishes to would be a sentence which would be too severe," Judge Ian Pringle QC said.
He made the "exceptional" move of deferring the sentence for four months.
"What you did will never, I know, leave you, but it was pretty awful, and normally it would attract a custodial sentence, whether it is immediate or suspended," he said.
Woodward stabbed her then-partner in the leg after she punched him in the face. She also threw a laptop, glass and jam jar at him in the attack in September last year.
The young woman, who lives in Milan with her mother, will be allowed to return to Christ Church in October because she "is that bright" and has had articles published in medical journals, the court heard.
She has been given a restraining order, told to stay drug-free, and will be sentenced in September.
Newshub.
