A jilted teen killed a 16-year-old girl in a Connecticut high school on Friday after she refused to go to prom with him, friends and witnesses said.
The violence erupted after Chris Plaskon, also 16, shoved Maren Sanchez, down the stairs and tried to choke her inside Jonathan Law High School in Milford about 7:15 a.m., friends told the Daily News.
The boy – using a kitchen knife he brought from home – then stabbed Sanchez in the neck, witnesses and cops said.
“She was screaming,” one friend, who was inside the building at the time of the attack, told The News. “There were students in the hallway when it happened. The kids who saw it are all a wreck.”
Emergency workers found the bleeding teen, a junior, in the stairwell and rushed her to Bridgeport Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Plaskon was cuffed by a school resource officer before cops arrived, Milford Police Chief Keith Mello told reporters.
The suspect, who was not officially identified because of his age, was not immediately charged.
“The unprovoked attack on Maren this morning has unfortunately, for our family, resulted in the permanent loss of Maren Victoria Sanchez: a bright light, full of hopes and dreams, with the future at her fingertips,” the girl’s adult cousin, Edward Kovac, told reporters Friday afternoon. “Maren should be celebrating at her prom this evening with her friends and classmates. Instead, we are mourning her death, and we are trying as a community to understand this senseless loss of life.”
The gruesome killing shocked friends of Sanchez, an honor student who was active in several after-school programs.
“She was a vibrant contributor to the school community and we will greatly mourn this loss,” Superintendent Elizabeth Feser said. “We are devastated as a community.”
But even her accused killer had a respected reputation.
“He was smart, he did well in classes,” the friend said. “Something had to snap.”
Sanchez, who was a member of the school’s drama club, was expected to appear next weekend in the group’s performance of the musical, “Little Shop of Horrors,” friends said.
She was slated to peform several small roles and act as puppeteer of the the star character, a plant.
The school was placed on lockdown immediately after the attack, but the order was lifted soon after police arrived.
Students and staff were dismissed from school about 9 a.m.
The school’s junior prom was scheduled for Friday night at a banquet hall in nearby Stratford, but officials said the event would be postponed to another day.
Sanchez was excited for the prom, posting a picture March 3 to Facebook of her wearing her prom dress.
“Yay,” she wrote next to a smiley face emoticon as she modeled her floor-lenth, marine blue gown. “so excited!!!”
Read more: NYDailyNews
