A former Penn State student who stabbed a man during a fight at an off-campus apartment complex in Patton Township was sentenced Friday to at least three months in jail.
Judah-Tafari Sampieri, 21, was sentenced by Senior Judge Pamela Ruest to a maximum of 23 1/2 months in the Centre County Correctional Facility. He received credit for 11 days served.
Sampieri was also ordered to complete anger management counseling.
“The only thing I can say is that I apologize for my actions,” Sampieri told Ruest before his sentence was handed down. “I wish his family the best.”
Sampieri, of Connecticut, stabbed the man in the lower back with a serrated kitchen knife in March at The Bryn, township police wrote in an affidavit of probable cause.
Sampieri told investigators the man harassed his girlfriend by “grabbing her head in a headlock,” police wrote. The man said he and Sampieri “agreed to fight on the lawn” of the apartment complex, police wrote.
“Something that should have been two drunk college students blowing off some steam resulted in me almost dying,” the man wrote in a statement read aloud by Centre County Assistant District Attorney Joshua Andrews.
There was an “immense” amount of blood coming from the wound, police wrote. Centre LifeLink EMS transported the man to Mount Nittany Medical Center for treatment of injuries that were not life-threatening.
Most of his physical injuries healed after about two months, though he wrote he still has nerve damage in his lower back and right leg. He continues to battle with emotional trauma.
He wrote of night terrors, developing a form of depression, shaking and crying randomly, having difficulty socializing and anxiety. He meets with a therapist weekly.
“It is a miracle I am not paralyzed right now,” the man wrote. “… This incident has permanently scarred me.”
Defense lawyer Karen Kuebler intimated Sampieri believed the stabbing was accidental, not intentional.
He pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of simple assault. Five charges were dropped, including two felony counts of aggravated assault.
Sampieri last attended Penn State during the spring 2022 semester, university spokeswoman Lisa Powers wrote in a January email. He was a junior.
She declined to comment specifically on why Sampieri was no longer enrolled at the university, citing the federal law that protects the privacy of students’ education records.