This man who poured flesh-eating chemicals onto a woman as she slept after she rejected his advances had turned off the water and emptied jugs and other containers first so she could do nothing as it left her blind, with the bones of her skull exposed, a court has heard.
The incident took place when the attacker allegedly poured the concoction, which he had made himself, on the woman while she was asleep in her own bed. The attack happened at the property in the district of Avcilar in the Turkish province of Istanbul in the early hours of 5th October last year.
The attacker, who has been named as Mehmet Yildiz, 30, has now appeared in front of a judge, with the victim’s lawyer saying that his client has been “dying for five months” since the vicious attack.
The lawyer also said that the defendant “had planned before the event to turn off the water valves of the house and emptied water from objects such as jugs and other containers”.
The victim, who has been named as Yasemin Uzuncelebi, 42, had rejected the defendant’s advances, and the defendant was allegedly unable to accept it when she told him that she was not interested in a relationship with him. As a result, the court has heard how he decided to get revenge.
The incident left the victim, who had reportedly known her attacker for some time, screaming in agony.
She jumped out of her bed in pain after the defendant allegedly poured the black, flammable substance on her face.
He fled the premises, as can be seen in this footage, and she later reportedly managed to make it out of the house and get help from neighbours, who were reportedly horrified to see that the liquid had burned away her flesh right the way down to the bone, destroying the woman’s eyesight in the process.
The woman was taken to hospital, where doctors said they had never seen injuries like it, with bone exposed after the woman’s flesh was completely dissolved by the concoction. The defendant was arrested and taken into custody.
Investigators got hold of CCTV footage from the area that had captured the moment Yildiz ran out of Uzuncelebi’s house after he poured chemicals on her face, and a manhunt was launched after it was shared with local media.
Yildiz did not reveal how he had come up with recipe for the flesh-eating chemical, but he confessed that it involved several different liquids mixed together after he was finally located and arrested by teams from the Avcilar Police Department.
Uzuncelebi’s injuries were so severe that even now, months later, she is still fighting for her life in the intensive care unit.
Hatice and Nazli Uzuncelebi, the victim’s sisters, attended the latest hearing, at which the defendant was expected to speak but chose to remain silent. His lawyer has asked that his mental health be assessed.
The Kucukcekmece Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has demanded a prison sentence of between 13 to 20 years for the horrific attack on the charge of ‘attempted murder with prejudice’.
Femicide is a growing problem in Turkey, particularly after the country officially quit the Istanbul Convention in July last year. According to the 2021 Annual Data Report announced by the ‘We Will Stop Femicide Platform’, 280 women were killed by men in 2021, while 217 women were found suspiciously dead.
According to data from the ‘Monument Counter’, which is a monument established on the Internet to keep alive the memory of the women who died due to violence against women in Turkey and which is updated every day, 59 femicides have taken place since the beginning of 2022.