Lawyer who represented Franklin Regional High School attacker says he should be release from prison
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — A decade after the stabbing rampage at Franklin Regional High School, the lawyer who defended Alex Hribal believes his former client should be released from prison.
Ten years ago, then-16-year-old Alex Hribal took two eight-inch kitchen knives from his parent's home and went on a rampage through Franklin Regional High School, stabbing 20 students. But 10 years later, his attorney at the time is asking those victims to forgive his former client.
"Thankfully nobody died," defense attorney Patrick Thomassey said. "I would ask them to forgive. It's been 10 years. Forgive Alex. He's paid for what he did."
Thomassey describes Hribal as a mentally ill outsider who lacked friends and isolated himself on social media and the internet, adopting strange beliefs and losing touch with reality. Being frail and odd, Thomassey says Hribal was picked on at school.
"Alex was being bullied and that's not an excuse, but nobody knew it," he said. "His parents didn't even know it. And it drove him to what he did."
But unlike Jennifer and James Crumbley, the Michigan couple who bought their son, Ethan, a gun that he used in a mass shooting, Thomassey says Hribal's parents did not know their son was troubled or harboring violent thoughts and did not aid the assault.
"They were crushed by this, and they are good people," Thomassey said. "I could not blame a single thing on them. They didn't do anything wrong. If they would have known what was going on, they would have done something."
Hribal pleaded guilty to the attack and a judge sentenced him to 23 to 60 years in prison. The state Supreme Court subsequently rejected the family's appeal that Hribal should have been tried as a juvenile and not as an adult. Thomassey says Hribal could be paroled after 18 years but believes he should be released sooner than that.
"I would hope that he gets paroled soon, and he would get into a special needs situations with the right kind of counselor," he said.
But even if his victims find room in their hearts to forgive Hribal, that will not win his freedom. With his appeals exhausted, it appears he will spend at least another eight years in prison.