Sanchez, 16, was slashed to death Friday morning inside Jonathan Law High School after she rejected a boy who asked her to prom. The dance was scheduled for Friday night but postponed after the brutal murder, allegedly at the hands of a 16-year-old classmate.
MICHELLE MCLOUGHLIN/REUTERSBalloons are released at the beach during a vigil in honor of slain student Maren Sanchez in Milford, Conn., on Friday.Instead of prom Friday night, Jonathan Law High School students went to a seaside vigil for their murdered classmate.
About 200 community members and students, some wearing their prom dresses and tuxedos, gathered Friday evening at Walnut Beach in Milford, Conn., to remember 16-year-old Maren Sanchez, a junior who was murdered earlier in the day at the school after rejecting a classmate’s invitation to the dance.
Friends identified the boy as Chris Plaskon, also 16. He has been charged with murder as a juvenile, but could be charged as an adult following a court appearance Monday in New Haven.
Police did not identify the teen.
Anguished classmates funneled down to Walnut Beach around 6 p.m. — one hour before the school’s junior prom was scheduled to start at a nearby banquet hall.
The annual dance was postponed after the tragedy.
Wearing their formal wear, students cried and prayed at the local beach, the Hartford Courant reported. Friends shouted out memories of their slain classmate as they released purple balloons into the sky and yelled “Love you, Maren,” the newspaper reported.
MICHELLE MCLOUGHLIN/REUTERSPeople embrace on Walnut Beach during the 6 p.m. vigil. Many students showed up in their formal wear as a remembrance to Sanchez, who was excited for the scheduled prom.Earlier, students covered a rock outside the school with purple spray paint and wrote the teen’s name and birthday, Aug. 26, 1997, alongside a white heart.
Sanchez was attacked, allegedly by Plaskon, around 7:15 a.m., when the boy shoved the girl down a set of stairs and started to choke her, witnesses told the Daily News.
The teen pulled out a kitchen knife he brought from home and slashed Sanchez across the neck, chest and face.
MICHELLE MCLOUGHLIN/REUTERSStudents shouted out memories about their classmate, Maren Sanchez, as they released balloons into the sky.She was pronounced dead at 7:43 a.m. Plaskon was immediately taken into custody.
“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.”
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 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.”
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-length, marine blue gown. “so excited!!!”
With News Wire Services
