Spencer Pearson, the Ponte Vedra High School graduate who stabbed his ex-girlfriend in a restaurant parking lot last year will be sentenced on October 25 at 9 a.m. in St. Johns County Court, according to a new filing.
Pearson was originally slated for to learn his fate this month, but prosecutors requested a delay to address new psychiatric evaluations submitted by his defense team.
The former Ponte Vedra HS football player, 20, repeatedly stabbed Madison Schemitz outside Chubby’s Wings in Ponte Vedra Beach, leaving her with debilitating wounds.
Pearson had stalked and menaced Schemitz after she ended their relationship. The victim’s mother, Jaclyn Roge, has sought a restraining order against him not long before the incident.
Pearson’s attack only ended when hero bystander Kennedy Armstrong intervened and pulled him off of his target.
The troubled assailant then attempted to kill himself at the scene before being rushed to the hospital with neck lacerations.
Pearson pleaded guilty in July to to two counts of attempted first-degree murder and one count of aggravated battery causing serious bodily injury.
His attorneys solicited an evaluation from Dr. Harry Krop as to his mental condition ahead of sentencing, spurring prosecutors to seek out their own assessment from Dr. Gregory Prichard.
Krop has participated in thousands of high stakes court cases — and once interviewed Casey Anthony at the request of her attorneys in 2011.
Schemitz embarked on a grueling rehabilitation journey after the attack, and drew tears at her graduation as she walked across the stage.
“I am so grateful to be alive and will continue to use each day as an opportunity to live and make a difference,” she wrote on the one year anniversary of the assault. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned it is to live in the present, because tomorrow is not promised. And, ‘If you’re going through hell, keep going’, because it will always get better. I love you all so so much. My story is just beginning.”
