acid attack, aggravated assault, guilty plea

The man who committed aggravated assault and perpetrated an acid attack against his ex girlfriend has entered a guilty plea, and will be sentenced for the crime that he has plead guilty to. The acid attack happened in August of 2012, and the victim Tanya St. Arnauld was severely injured and came very close to dying. The defendant in the case is Nikolas Stefanatos, and he has been in detention since he was arrested for the aggravated assault in 2013. 30 year old Tanya St. Arnauld was standing on the steps in front of her Longueuil apartment when Nikolas Stefanatos dowsed her with acidic concrete cleaner, leaving her with more than 20% of her body burned and in a coma.

Since the acid attack Tanya St. Arnauld has had to endure a number of surgeries and skin grafts which cause excruciating pain, and she still bears physical and psychological scars from the aggravated assault on her that day. The guilty plea of Nikolas Stefanatos will not undue the trauma and pain of her experience, but St. Arnauld has started to move forward. The woman remembers the acid attack, and screaming hysterically as she ran into the apartment of a neighbor for help. Tanya St. Arnauld talked about when she thought she would die, saying “I thought about the little things, that I hadn’t seen my mother that day, my regrets, things I’d missed. The things you take for granted … it’s taken away in a split second. Every detail, every sound, even the acid smell … that’s what I see all day,”