A Pennsylvania man was sentenced to a maximum of nearly two years in jail after plea bargaining in the fatal stabbing of a next-door neighbor who threatened to kill him over the sound of his snoring.
Christopher Casey, 56, used a large, military-style knife to kill Robert Wallace, 62, following a series of arguments between the men, who shared a common wall between their bedrooms in a duplex apartment complex in Hatboro, a suburb north of Philadelphia.
Casey, who lived alone, was eating dinner on Jan. 14 when Wallace knocked on a ground floor window and yelled that he was going to kill Casey, the Montgomery County District Attorney reported.
Wallace then ripped off the screen and opened the window and the two men argued for about 20 minutes before Wallace calmed down, offered to pay for corrective surgery to curb Casey's loud snoring and said he wanted to shake hands.
But before Casey opened his door, he armed himself with the knife and a Taser, telling police he feared that Wallace, who was larger than Casey, wasn't sincere and was planning to attack him.
Casey said he stabbed Wallace at last three times in the chest and accidentally stabbed himself once in the leg during the bloodshed.
In court on Thursday, Wallace's relatives said that Casey's snoring prevented him from sleeping. and the resulting fatigue affected his life and ability to work, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Defense lawyer James Lyons also said that Wallace had bullied Casey for more than a year, repeatedly threatening to kill him, and that Casey has autism that makes it hard for him to handle confrontation.
"He's a really good man who was not equipped to deal with this type of this sustained abuse and threats," Lyons said. "He was terrified of this guy, and he believed that he had no option."
In addition to a jail term of 11 1/2 to 23 months, Montgomery County Court Judge Risa Vetri Ferman ordered Casey to serve three years' probation as part of his negotiated sentence.
Casey was also barred from returning to his apartment when he's released from the county jail.
