A 54-year-old woman in Austria was found guilty of causing her neighbor’s death by infecting her with COVID-19, marking her second pandemic-related conviction.
This case, which came from an infection in 2021, generated attention due to the unusual circumstances and implications of human responsibility during the pandemic.
A local court imposed a four-month suspended sentence and an 800-euro fine ($886.75) for severely negligent homicide. The defendant’s neighbor, who was also battling cancer, died from pneumonia caused by the coronavirus.
The case was supported by a virological analysis indicating that the virus’s DNA matched both the deceased and the defendant. According to the Austrian news agency APA, an expert claimed it was “almost 100 percent” likely that the defendant transmitted the virus.
The judge, although expressing sadness, stated that the defendant’s infection was unlucky to be traced so definitively. I feel sorry for you personally — I think that something like this has probably happened hundreds of times,” the judge said during the sentencing. “But you are unlucky that an expert has determined with almost absolute certainty that it was an infection that came from you.”
The woman was convicted of a COVID-related offense last summer, APA reported. The agency said she was sentenced to three months’ suspended imprisonment for intentionally endangering people through communicable diseases. But she was acquitted on the grossly negligent homicide charge at that time.
This week, the judge heard statements from the deceased’s family, who said there had been contact in a stairwell between the neighbors on Dec. 21, 2001 — when the defendant would already have known she had COVID-19. But she denied the meeting, saying she was too sick to get out of bed that day. She also said she believed she had bronchitis, which she typically gets every year.
But the woman’s doctor told police that the defendant had tested positive with a rapid test and told him that she “certainly won’t let herself be locked up” after the result.
