A Maryland woman will spend the next three decades in prison for stabbing her friend to death in a Rockville home.
Sophia Negroponte was sentenced Friday to 35 years in the stabbing death of 24-year-old Yousuf Rasmussen.
A jury convicted Negroponte of second-degree murder in January.
Negroponte and Rasmussen were friends who came from similar backgrounds.
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Negroponte is the daughter of John Negroponte, a former U.S. ambassador to Honduras and ex-intelligence director. The Negropontes adopted her from an orphanage in Honduras when she was a baby.
Rasmussen had also been adopted into a successful family, and it was one of the reasons family members say the two bonded.
"He was an extraordinary person and I think that’s reflected in everyone who came today," Rasmussen's father Stephen Rasmussen said after the sentencing.
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Rasmussen's father, Stephen Rasmussen, was surrounded by friends and family Friday when he spoke after the sentencing.
"The judge went above the suggested Maryland sentencing guidelines in this case," Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy said.
Family described the relationship between Negroponte and Rasmussen as platonic and often playful, and said it was like that up until Rasmussen's death in February 2020.
"It was just like, you know, adolescent fun and they would wrestle. They had been wrestling earlier in the evening," McCarthy said.
Rasmussem left the Rockiville home, but returned for his phone, prosecutors said.
"When he came back to get his cellphone, she armed herself with a knife and attacked him and stabbed him in the neck," McCarthy said.
Negroponte said Friday she knew Rasmussen's family was devastated and that he was a loving, caring person. She said she was ashamed of what happened and sorry.
Montgomery County Judge Terrence McCann said she hadn't been truthful about that night to police and on stand during her trial.
He said Negroponte's history of violent outbursts, especially when she drank alchohol, led to the attack.
"She had anger issues throughout her entire life. There were issues about her anger problems, there were also issues of the complicity of alcohol and the amount of drinking that’d been going on," McCarthy said.
Prosecutors called Negroponte "a powder keg ready to go off."
The defense, however, said the killed was an accidental death.
Rasmussen's family is now left with only the positive difference he made in their lives.
"We were all affected in some way by him and his life and as parents it may have affected us more," Stephen Rasmussen said.
