An aspiring heart surgeon who could avoid jail for stabbing her boyfriend because of her extraordinary potential may not be allowed back into her course, according to Oxford University.
It has emerged 24-year-old medical student Lavinia Woodward was already on a final warning from her college when she punched her boyfriend before stabbing him with a bread knife and throwing glass jars at him in a drug-fuelled stupor in September 2016.
A spokesperson from Oxford University said she had already received her last caution when she was found to have been taking drugs. She was told if there was any more misconduct, she would be expelled from Christ Church College.
The spokesperson also said suggestions she would be allowed to continue her studies as normal were entirely the judge's and not of the college.
There is no "guarantee of a return" for Woodward, and the university had only started looking into her future after the court case concluded, as per protocol, he said - adding the context "is obviously very serious".
Woodward admitted to wounding her boyfriend, a Cambridge University student who she met on Tinder, earlier in May. Her case was looked upon with sympathy by the judge, who deferred her sentencing date by four months.
"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.
"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."
Judge Pringle said she should be allowed to return to Christ Church College in October because she is "bright" and has had articles published in medical journals, the court heard.
Woodward currently lives in Milan, Italy with her mother, and will be sentenced in September.
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