‘Aren’t you dead yet?’ Kennewick man asks wounded wife

By Kristin M. Kraemer / Tri-City Herald

“Die. Die. And may God never bring you back.”

That’s what Abdul Rahman Sweidan told his wife as he plunged a knife 23 times into her chest, face and upper back, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Lying on the floor of her Kennewick living room in a growing pool of blood, Dania Z. Alhafeth’s immediate thoughts went to her children. Who would protect them?

But when she spoke or moved, Sweidan responded with, “Aren’t you dead yet?” according to prosecutors.

At some point, Sweidan stopped, took their 2-year-old son to a bedroom and locked him in, Deputy Prosecutor Emily Sullivan told jurors. Then Sweidan changed out of his bloody clothes, before returning to the living room to find his wife still breathing.

“You’re not dead yet?” he asked as he again stabbed her. She screamed, then went still.

Sweidan walked out of their apartment, locked the front door and drove himself to the emergency room for cuts to his hands, said Sullivan. He left behind his severely wounded wife and locked up toddler.

The 47-year-old meat plant worker is on trial in Benton County Superior Court for that Aug. 30 attack at the Central Park Apartments.

He is charged with attempted second-degree murder and first-degree assault, with aggravators of domestic violence, use of a deadly weapon and the fact the crime happened near their young child.

A jury of six women and eight men was seated Wednesday. The panel includes two alternates.

In her 15-minute opening statement, Sullivan explained that Alhafeth and Sweidan had been married for 21 years when they got into an argument last summer. The subject of the dispute wasn’t child care or infidelity, but Sweidan’s need for control.

“He needed to control Dania. When Dania worked, he needed to control the money. When Dania wanted to send money to family members, he needed to shut that down,” Sullivan said.

“And when Dania wanted to go about her day-to-day life, he could not handle that. He attacked her with questions. He asked her: ‘Where you going? What are you doing?’ He interrogated her incessantly because he needed control over her life, and over her,” she said.

Alhafeth, 40, suggested maybe they shouldn’t be together, maybe they should separate.

Sweidan “responded in no uncertain terms with ‘I will kill you before I divorce you. I will kill you before I divorce you,’” Sullivan said. “And ladies and gentleman, the evidence will show that that is exactly what the defendant attempted to do.”

He left Alhafeth to die, she said.

“However, thankfully to medical staff at Trios (Southridge Hospital), thankfully to the first responders, and thankfully to Dania’s own will to live, she didn’t die. She survived,” said Sullivan.

Sweidan has denied the allegations. He attributed his own wounds to being cut on the job at Tyson Foods.

Defense attorney Eric Scott gave a one-minute opening statement to jurors, saying he will be summarizing the evidence at the end of the trial.

“The only thing I ask of this jury is to keep an open mind throughout the proceedings,” said Scott. He told the jurors not to make any judgments of evidence presented, and to hold the state to proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Alhafeth and Sweidan married in May 1996 in Homs, Syria. They came to the United States, via Jordan, as refugees through World Relief.

“Dania Alhafeth left Syria to get away from the bloodshed and violence,” but she couldn’t escape it at home because the person she was married to wanted to kill her, Sullivan told jurors.

The couple’s 19-year-old daughter, Aya, was the first witness called Wednesday to talk about her parents’ relationship and what happened before the Aug. 30 attack.

Aya Sweidan said through a court interpreter she has three siblings at home, ages 2, 11 and 17. She also has a 21-year-old sister in Jordan.

Her parents argued about money, her mother’s comings and goings, and other things when they lived in Syria. Their arguments increased in Jordan, then became a daily occurrence “for very small and trivial things” after they moved to the United States, she said.

The teen said she worked at a McDonald’s for about 10 months, and her mother was a caregiver.

Aya Sweidan testified that she had repeatedly heard her father say he would kill her mother before they got divorced or she started dating someone else. He also threatened to tell people “you are not good, you are bad” on Facebook and other social media sites, the teen said.

She said when she heard the arguments and threats, she would suggest that her parents should separate. “He would get agitated and he would come close like he would hit me,” the teen said of her father’s response.

But when the kids were at the Kennewick Police Department hours after her mother was stabbed, Aya Sweidan told an officer there weren’t a lot of problems in her family. She testified that she was extremely scared and in shock at the time, and admitted it wasn’t the truth.

“I could never imagine that one of these days something from those threats could actually become reality,” she said. The teen added that in the Middle Eastern culture, what happens inside the home often is private and not shared with outsiders.

Defense attorney Michael Vander Sys asked the teen if she or her mother ever believed Sweidan actually was going to kill her mother. Aya Sweidan said no, they did not.