Christopher Plaskon, now 19, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the stabbing death of Maren Sanchez. Plaskon killed Sanchez in a school stairwell in April 2014 after she refused to be his prom date.
Plaskon stabbed Sanchez to death on the day of prom, then told responding officers, “I did it. Just arrest me.” In his sentencing hearing on Monday, Sanchez’s mother Donna called her daughter “my partner in crime, my best friend, my greatest joy.”
While awaiting trial, Plaskon wrote a letter to his father saying he heard “voices” and that was the reason he “did what he did.”
The Hartford Courant reports that his defense attorneys had said they were considering entering an insanity plea; his parents told police he suffered from unspecified mental health issues as a child “and had received treatment for mood swings, depression, suicidal thoughts and self-mutilating behavior.” Plaskon ultimately pleaded no contest in March. His attorney apologized to the Sanchez family on his behalf during Monday’s sentencing hearing.
The Sanchez family has also filed a lawsuit against the board of education, the city of Milford, Plaskon himself and his parents, saying Sanchez explicitly warned the school that Plaskon was emotionally disturbed. The suit claims that five months before the stabbing, Sanchez reported to a guidance counselor that Plaskon was “was threatening to commit suicide or acts of serious self-harm by cutting himself with a knife.” He was suspended for about a week; when he returned, the suit says, he began cutting himself again at school and engaging in other public self-destructive behaviors.
A friend of Plaskon’s later told police that he’d expressed fantasies about hurting Sanchez because he wanted to be “more than friends,” and that he wouldn’t mind if she were “dead or hit by a bus.”
Plaskon in court in March. Photo via AP