Kensington Man Gets 46-92 Years In Prison For Killing Girlfriend
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - A 24-year-old Philadelphia man has pleaded guilty and has been sentenced to 46 to 92 years in prison for murdering his girlfriend and assaulting two other men in an earlier incident.
The victim made a final plea for help just minutes or hours before she was beaten and stabbed nearly 60 times in Kensington last July.
Gina Schickling, 22, had just returned from college in California, was living with Stephen Benford, and she was doomed. He was beating her, controlling her, and on the morning she was killed, prosecutor Jodie Lobel says Schickling sent a text message to friends: "don't text me back unless it is important and involves getting me away from him because he is looking at me suspicious."
She was killed that day.
Lobel says her family was in court to share memories of her.
"They were talking about what a great person she was, how artistic she was, very giving, very lovable, how many friends she had, just that she was 22-years-old, just starting out her life, and she became vulnerable to the defendant and he ended it."
Lobel says Benford claimed he was high on drugs at the time of the murder.
Reported by Tony Hanson, KYW Newsradio
