She had endured enough violence for the night, so with one stab, she ended it all.
The only problem, one that would haunt her, was that the stab wound ended what Fiona Akinyi had not intended: her husband's life.
She only wanted to silence drunken Zachariah Mwangi but the stab wound to his thigh severed the femoral artery. He quickly bled to death.
As she stood in the dock on Thursday, Akinyi stared impassively at the judge, the prosecution and the lawyers. She never looked at the gallery. She had admitted the crime.
Mwangi had returned to their house in Korogocho on the night of March 14 drunk to the gills. Akini and their only child were sleeping. With the second knock, he hurled an insult, then another and another.
“Go back to where you came from, I won’t open,” Akinyi shouted, not moving from her bed.
The enraged Mwangi picked a big stone and smashed the door, breaking it open and once he got in, the abuse got worse.
They argued ferociously and, without thinking, Akinyi grabbed a kitchen knife and plunged it into her husband's thigh.
She said he went down in pain, bleeding profusely.
She ran to her brother-in-law, Joseph Njeru, who stayed close by.
Akinyi woke Njeru’s wife and they returned to her house. Mwangi had already died.
“Accompanied by Mwangi’s sister-in-law, I went to Korogocho police station where I reported the matter,” she told the court.
Police found Mwangi in lying in buckets of blood and took him to City Mortuary. They also recovered a blood-stained kitchen knife hidden under the mattress.
A postmortem showed that he died due to excessive bleeding.
Akinyi was arrested and charged with murder but the charge was reduced to manslaughter after the court found that the crime was not premeditated.
Her lawyer John Swaka told the court she was remorseful and filled with anguish. She had no intention of killing her husband, it was a spur of the moment reaction.
“She was provoked and acted to defend herself when he broke into the house. He was drunk and very abusive," Swaka said.
He said Akinyi did not flee but turned herself in when she realised what she had done.
High Court justice Stella Mutuku found her guilty of manslaughter and ordered Akinyi be taken for psychiatric testing, noting she had been treated for a mental condition in 2009.
She asked for a probation report before she sentences Akinyi on June 13.
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