A former Boston College student Inyoung You on Thursday December 22, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the suicide of her boyfriend and fellow student, Alexander Urtula.
This is coming after a Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Superior Court heard how You sent her boyfriend tens of thousands of frenzied text messages, some telling him to “go kill yourself,” before he jumped to his death.
Prosecutors charged You with involuntary manslaughter back in November 2019, six months after her 22-year-old boyfriend Alexander Urtula leapt to his death. He was meant to graduate hours later.
During an investigation, You was found to have sent Urtula over 47,000 text messages in the last two months of their 18-month relationship, many of which showed her repeatedly belittling him and urging him to kill himself and to “go die.”
You, now 23, had been fighting the charges in the hopes of taking her appeal to a higher court in the state in February. However, her lawyer Steven Kim said in a statement to Reuters on Thursday that she decided to give that appeal up and take responsibility for her actions instead.
Part of the deal she struck with prosecutors stipulated that You is not able to profit in any way from the case by selling her story in the future.
The former Boston student has now been handed a suspended jail sentence of 2 1/2 years and 10 years of probation by Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Superior Court Judge Robert Ullman.
The suspended sentence means that she can avoid time behind bars if she upholds the terms of her probation, which include completing 300 hours of community service, continuing mental health treatment and abstaining from profit related to the case, her lawyer said.
The first five years of that probationary term will be supervised, during which time You will be required to comply with a number of conditions, including that she complete community service and continue to undergo mental health treatment by a licensed provider.