On Friday morning, a 16-year-old male student stabbed his classmate, Maren Sanchez, to death at Milford, Connecticut’s Jonathan Law High School, apparently because Sanchez declined his invitation to their junior prom. The boy, identified as Chris Plaskon, is currently being held at a medical facility for a 15-day psychiatric evaluation. Though he has already been charged as a juvenile offender, his lawyer, Richard Meehan, told reporters that he will likely be tried as an adult. Several students told the Hartford Courant that Plaskon didn’t seem violent and “was an average student who had friends.” He will be arraigned on Monday.
Meanwhile, the prom, which was scheduled for Friday evening, was postponed. Outside the high school, students and teachers painted a rock with Sanchez’s name and birthday. Some of her friends also gathered in their prom clothes at a nearby beach, where they took photos with the dress Sanchez had planned to wear to the dance, released balloons, and “shouted out [her] name into the distance.”
The 16-year-old was described as well-liked and very involved at school, with one coach, Melanie Paolini, telling the Courant that she was “everything you would want your daughter to turn out like.” Sanchez’s cousin, Edward Kovac, gave a statement calling her “a bright light full of hopes and dreams with her future at her fingertips.” “Maren should be celebrating at her prom this evening,” he said. “Instead we are mourning her death.”
