Bryn Spejcher, 33, stabbed her boyfriend, Chad O’Melia, 108 times across his body and then stabbed herself 43 times.
A California judge sentenced a woman who stabbed her boyfriend to death to community service after ruling she was not in control of herself after she had been smoking marijuana. The victim’s grieving father says everyone who smokes marijuana in California has been given the license to kill.
Bryn Spejcher, 33, stabbed her boyfriend, Chad O’Melia, 108 times across his body.
Video from the scene in Thousand Oaks, California, shows Spejcher on a stretcher covered in blood. After stabbing her boyfriend, she turned the knife on herself and stabbed herself in the neck 43 times. She also stabbed her dog.
A jury found the 33-year-old guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Family and friends of the 26-year-old victim were certain she would get a serious prison sentence. Instead, Spejcher was spared jail time and sentenced to 100 hours of community service.
“I got to tell you I felt betrayed by the system. I felt that the system had failed,” O’Melia’s father Sean, tells Inside Edition. “I don’t understand how you go from stabbing somebody 108 times and then you get community service.”
The judge ruled Spejcher committed the crime after “smoking highly potent Marijuana” and was experiencing “Marijuana Induced Psychosis” and “had no control over her actions.”
Spejcher claimed her boyfriend never told her the marijuana was especially strong when he gave it to her to smoke.
“The pathetic defense here has been to blame the victim, ‘Let’s blame the person who has been stabbed 108 times,’ it was ridiculous,” Sean says.
Deputy District Attorney Audry Nafziger prosecuted the case.
“It’s a complete miscarriage of justice. It’s a slap in the face to the victim and the family and I think it harms victims everywhere,” Nafziger says. “It sets a dangerous precedent for our county.”
Nafziger says she believes O’Melia was blamed for his own death.
In addition to community service, Spejcher was put on probation for two years.
