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The mother of a man murdered in the early hours of New Year's Day by her partner is facing a jail sentence for wounding.
Svetlana Kandate today admitted unlawfully wounding Oleg Zavaliy and her not guilty plea to wounding with intent was accepted by the prosecution.
The petite 41-year-old Latvian stabbed the victim in the thigh at a house in Sutton Road, Maidstone, on January 1 last year - exactly a year before her son Dimitris Titovs was killed at flats in Teynham, near Sittingbourne.
Mr Zavaliy is now working as a lorry driver in Latvia.
Maidstone Crown Court heard Kandate had been jailed in Latvia in April 2007 for three years for grievous bodily harm. She was paroled in November 2009.
She has been in custody for latest offence since June this year.
Juris Popovs, 47, was convicted in July of murdering 21-year-old Mr Titovs at Henley Place in London Road, Teynham. He is due to be sentenced to life imprisonment on September 10.
Popovs denied murder and an alternative charge of manslaughter, claiming it must have been Kandate who inflicted the fatal chest wound.
Giving evidence for the prosecution through a Russian interpreter, Kandate said after her son was stabbed she jumped out of a window on the first floor.
Asked why she did so, she replied: "Juris said if I stayed in the flat, I would get the same as what happened to my son."
After the verdict, it was revealed Popovs had killed before in Russia. He was jailed for seven years and eight months in 1988 for causing the death of a man by "using excessive self-defence".
Remanding Kandate in custody until sentence on September 5, Judge Philip Statman said: "I know what happened to her in the last year, particularly the murder of her son.
"I can understand what she has been through and what she suffered on the night. I do not need a report on her. The issue is how long the sentence should be."
