LEEDS, England, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- An attorney for a man accused of burying his fiancee alive told an English jury his client was trying to scare the woman, not kill her.
The defense lawyer said Marcin Kasprzak, 25, left two handholds open on the cardboard box in which he buried Polish immigrant Michelina Lewandowska, 27, so she could breathe, ABC News reported Wednesday.
"I can tell you now that they were not left specifically or intentionally for me to live," Lewandowska told the court Tuesday.
Kasprzak, who has a 3-year-old son with Lewandowska, is on trial with Patryk Borys, 18, on an attempted murder charge in Leeds Crown Court, the Yorkshire Post reported. Both men have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Lewandowska said Kasprzak used a stun gun to overpower her in the home they shared in Huddersfield in Yorkshire.
"I was trying to push him away with the Taser. He knelt down, he pressed my ribs with his knee and continued to use the Taser," she said.
Lewandowska, speaking in Polish, described being put in a car trunk and then buried in a box in a shallow grave in a wooded area. She said she prayed as she tried to figure out what to do, the Post said.
"I thought about my ring, that I could take it off my finger and try to cut through the tape with it," she said. "I cut the tape from my legs with this ring. I put the ring back on my finger then I put my whole hand through the opening."
Once she freed herself and dug her way out she said she could hear music from a nearby pub. She got to the road and was helped by a passing driver.
Jonathan Sharp, the prosecuting lawyer, told jurors Kasprzak decided to get rid of his partner because he was "bored."
