Peter Manfredonia was sentenced to 55 years in jail for killing two individuals, injuring one other, holding a person hostage and kidnapping a girl in 2020.

Ned Gerard/AP

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Ned Gerard/AP

Peter Manfredonia was sentenced to 55 years in jail for killing two individuals, injuring one other, holding a person hostage and kidnapping a girl in 2020.

Ned Gerard/AP

A Connecticut courtroom issued a second 55-year jail sentence to a person who attacked two individuals with a samurai sword, killing one and severely injuring the opposite.

It’s the second sentence — and an identical in size — for Peter Manfredonia, 26, who additionally fatally shot a person and kidnapped his girlfriend earlier than main police on a six-day manhunt throughout a number of states in 2020.

Manfredonia was a senior finding out finance and mechanical engineering on the University of Connecticut when he “just flipped,” according to his arrest warrant, and fatally struck 62-year-old Theodore DeMers with a sword on May 22, 2020 exterior the person’s house in Wilmington, Conn.

Manfredonia then attacked the person who got here to DeMers’ rescue, John Franco, who was 80 years outdated on the time, leaving him with extreme accidents to his palms, neck and head.

Manfredonia broke into a close-by house and took a 3rd man hostage for twenty-four hours. A day later, he drove throughout the state to Derby and fatally shot a former classmate and kidnapped that classmate’s girlfriend. He let her go, bodily unhurt, at a relaxation cease in New Jersey.

After a six-day search, police arrested Manfredonia at a truck cease in Hagerstown, Md., with out incident.

On Wednesday, the defendant was sentenced to 55 years in jail for the second killing and the kidnapping. On Thursday, he was sentenced to an extra 55 years in jail for the sword assaults, courtroom paperwork present.

Between the 2 circumstances, Manfredonia pleaded guilty to 5 counts of homicide, assault, kidnapping and residential invasion. Both of his sentences will run concurrently, and he agreed to not search early launch as a part of his plea bargains, The Associated Press reports.

The victims and their households in each circumstances agreed to the plea discount after months of debate, in line with reporting from Connecticut Public Radio.

This weeks’ sentencing hearings got here with a number of days of emotional testimony from victims and eyewitnesses.

Cindy DeMers, the widow of the person killed by samurai sword, instructed the courtroom she believed her husband’s killer deserved the demise penalty, although Connecticut outlawed capital punishment in 2016.

“It was like being in a war zone,” she mentioned, according to the Associated Press. “All I could focus on was reassuring Ted that he was going to be OK and we would put his body back together. We will get through this. We had gotten through so much together up until this point.

“He was still alive when he was taken away, but he never came home,” she added. “My husband’s life was stolen from him viciously. Life as I knew it [was] stolen from me. My world as I knew it came to an end.”

State Attorney Matthew Gedansky mentioned that Manfredonia was in DeMers’ neighborhood as a result of he deliberate to kill his ex-girlfriend, who lived close by, the AP reported. Michael Dolan, the defendant’s lawyer, mentioned his consumer has bipolar illness and nervousness and was truly planning to commit suicide in entrance of the lady as a part of a psychotic episode.

Witnesses mentioned DeMers thought Manfredonia had crashed his bike and was providing to assist when he was attacked, in line with a number of media accounts of the trial.

Mafredonia apologized twice in courtroom this week, directing separate feedback to every of the victims and their households.