Wife vows to stand by her husband after he stabbed her 46 times
While conventional wedding vows require you to stay with your spouse "for better or worse", there are many situations where extricating yourself is the healthiest thing to do, for both parties.
21-year-old Shannon Barnard, however, seems to have missed this memo. The newlywed, who hails from Leatherhead in Kent, England, has promised to stay by her husband's side, even though he has just been given a lengthy prison sentence for stabbing her 46 times in a drunken rage.
The attack took place on January 11th, 2018 - two weeks after Shannon discovered that her spouse had cheated on her with another woman while high on nitrous oxide. The couple had been arguing constantly, and during that time, Michael Barnard had exhibited signs of emotionally abusive behaviour.
When Shannon fell asleep on the sofa, she awoke in the morning to find her husband brandishing a knife at her. She sustained 14 wounds to her torso - four of which penetrated her internal organs - leaving her with a punctured lung.
She spent 17 days in hospital recovering from the incident.
Shannon described the attack in an interview conducted with police investigators:
"I screamed and then somehow I was in the front room. After he stabbed me I dropped to the floor. His dad was still on the phone and I was screaming 'He’s got a knife'. I was on my back on the floor and Mike was literally on top of me and was just stabbing me. He was on his knees and leant over me."
"I remember him trying to move my arms away and I was just screaming. He didn’t say anything apart from when I said 'Stop. I’ve got to call my dad'. He said 'No, you’ve got to die.' That was the only thing he said the whole time. He said it just once when I was on the floor. I was just thinking I was going to die, that I was dead," she continued.
At Maidstone Crown Court, Judge Philip Statman told Micheal, "Your wife was extraordinarily lucky to have survived this ordeal. The reason why she did so was down to the very quick medical response together with the extraordinary skill of the surgeons who undoubtedly in my judgment saved her life. This was a relentless and horrifying assault upon her. It was ferocious, and looking at the photographs of her body and indeed of the scene, one can see the amount of blood that she lost, and significantly the scars that will accompany her throughout her life."
"Each day when your victim gets up in the morning and looks down at her body she can see, and will do for the rest of her life that which you did to her. I am completely satisfied that to set about your wife in the way which you did in the matrimonial home constitutes the gravest breach of trust that one could possibly imagine. This is a very serious case of attempted murder."
Despite all this, Shannon has made it abundantly clear that she's committed to staying with Micheal - and is even planning on starting a family with him after he is released from prison.
She took to social media to defend Micheal, writing in a Facebook post: "My husband is MICHAEL BARNARD and if anyone wants to put anything on here about him unfriend me! Or if u talk to or have anything to do with them dossers then unfriend me! [sic]"
"I’ve said it before but I don’t think I’ve quite made myself clear enough whoever has anything to do with the mongrels who caused my husband to have a mental breakdown DO NOT TALK TO ME! I have nothing in common with people who associate or comment on there Facebook! unfriend me, [sic]" she later added.
Micheal Bernard has since been diagnosed with a short-lived adjustment disorder at the time of the attack, and has been placed on antipsychotic medication.