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A Hawaii doctor accused of trying to kill his wife on a hiking trail by bashing her head in with a rock claims he was acting in self-defense after they got into a fight over her cheating with a co-worker.
Gerhardt Konig, 47, who is on trial for attempted murder, admitted to striking his wife, Arielle, while they were hiking on Oahu last March — but his defense argued that the anesthesiologist was attacked first when he tried to dump his wife over her affair.
“She came after him, started kicking and punching,” defense attorney Thomas Otake said during his opening statements on Thursday.
“She picks up a rock and hits him in the face with it. He quickly reacts — human reaction. Grabs a rock, hits her twice and stops.”
Prosecutors have alleged Konig, who works as an anesthesiologist in Maui, had tried to push his wife off the trail, stab her with a syringe and repeatedly strike her with a jagged rock after they got into a heated spat over Arielle’s past indiscretions with her coworker.
The couple, who had set off on the Pali Puka Trail to celebrate Arielle’s birthday, had already been undergoing therapy and counseling to save their marriage when the violence erupted.
In Konig’s version of events, the doctor claims his wife and mother of his two children suddenly broached the topic of her affair by warning that she would have to see her lover soon for work and that he should trust her.
“He’s dumbfounded,” the defense attorney told the court.
“He tells her, ‘This isn’t going to work. You’re going to have to move out and I’m going to tell your friends and family about the affair.’”
“This led to a physical altercation that she started,” Otake added.
Moments later, two hikers — Amanda Morris and Sarah Buchsbaum — came up the trail and spotted Konig on top of his blood-soaked wife, the court heard.
The hikers, who happened to be nurses, immediately called 911.
“There’s a man trying to kill her. She has blood all over her face,” Buchsbaum said on the 911 call played in court.
“We heard her screaming ‘Help, help, help me, help me’ and then we saw a man over her, and then she crawled out with blood on her face. He tried to kill her.”
In their opening statements, prosecutors showed photos of Arielle’s head and face covered in blood as they described her being hit multiple times.
The defense, however, claimed Arielle only suffered a laceration that bled heavily and that she wasn’t seriously injured.
Konig, who fled the scene after the alleged attack, was arrested a short time later and charged with attempted murder.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
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