A teen convicted of killing a classmate in a Bronx school in 2017 was sentenced Tuesday to 14 years in prison.
Abel Cedeno, 19, stabbed two of his classmates at Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation on Sept. 27, 2017, claiming he was the victim of homophobic bullying. Matthew McCree, 15, died in the attack, and Ariane Laboy, 16 at the time, survived. Laboy gave emotional testimony at Tuesday’s sentencing, rebuffing Cedeno’s claims that the attack was self-denense.
“Everything that happened that day almost two years ago, I’m not the same person I was two years ago,” Cedeno said Tuesday at the sentencing. “I have been sorry about everything, for the damage I caused, for hurting two families,” said Cedeno.
Cedeno will serve 14 years for manslaughter and eight years for assault. Both sentences will run concurrently, according to ABC . He will also be subject to five years of probation after he is released.
In July, a judge found him guilty of first-degree manslaughter, a fourth-degree procession of a weapon, and first-degree assault.
Cedeno admitted to stabbing the two classmates, who he claims bullied him for being gay. During the trial, he also claimed to carry a knife as a means of protection, and said he pulled the blade out after McCree punched him, but does not recall stabbing him.
“The class was very rowdy and loudness and everything,” Cedeno later told ABC. “I just snapped.”
At his trial, Cedeno claimed that the victims yelled anti-gay slurs at him, and along with others threw pen caps, balls of paper, and pencils at him. After Cedeno plunged the blad into McCree’s chest and back, Laboy was stabbed trying to intervene.
