The adopted daughter of former President George W. Bush’s Director of Nationwide Intelligence, John Negroponte, was sentenced to 35 years in jail for the deadly stabbing of a good friend after a drunken argument inside a Maryland Airbnb six years in the past.
Sophia Negroponte, 33, was sentenced Friday by Montgomery County Circuit Court docket Choose Terrence McGann after being discovered responsible at trial in November of second-degree homicide for the demise of 24-year-old Yousuf Rasmussen.
It was a retrial after a 2023 conviction on the identical cost was overturned.
“The 35-year sentence mirrors the sentence imposed following the primary trial in 2023,” Montgomery County State’s Lawyer John McCarthy mentioned, in keeping with The Related Press.
“That is an applicable and simply end result in gentle of the seriousness of this crime and the constant findings of two separate juries who fastidiously evaluated the proof.”
Negroponte was first convicted of second-degree homicide in 2023 and obtained the identical 35-year sentence, however, in January 2024, a Maryland appeals court docket threw out the conviction, calling for a brand new trial in circuit court docket.
The appeals court docket ordered a brand new trial after ruling jurors improperly heard contested parts of a police interrogation and testimony questioning Negroponte’s credibility.
Sophia Negroponte was one among 5 Honduran youngsters who have been deserted or orphaned that John Negroponte and his spouse, Diana, adopted after Negroponte was appointed US ambassador to the Central American nation within the Nineteen Eighties, in keeping with The Washington Submit.
Sophia Negroponte and Rasmussen attended the identical Washington highschool and had been consuming, together with one other individual, on the night time Rasmussen was killed, McCarthy mentioned beforehand.
They argued twice that night time, and Rasmussen left the house.
When Rasmussen returned to get his cellphone, Negroponte “stabbed him a number of occasions, one a demise blow that severed his jugular,” McCarthy mentioned.
A 911 name prompted county and metropolis officers and fireplace rescue personnel in Rockville, Maryland, to reply to an Airbnb property Feb. 13, 2020, at roughly 11:16 p.m.
Negroponte, then 27, was discovered inside the house coated in blood and mendacity on prime of Rasmussen, yelling, “I’m sorry,” in keeping with charging paperwork obtained by Fox Information Digital.
Rasmussen was pronounced useless on the house, and Negroponte was taken into custody, the place she allegedly informed investigators she didn’t keep in mind attacking the person however recalled arguing over a “foolish challenge” and later eradicating a knife from his neck.
President George W. Bush appointed John Negroponte because the nation’s first intelligence director in 2005 after the 9/11 terrorist assaults.
He later served as deputy secretary of state.
He additionally beforehand served as ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Nations and Iraq.
