(Feb 26, 2015, (Richfield, Minnesota))--A judge on Friday, Feb. 20, sentenced Amreya Shefa to seven years and two months in prison for the death of her husband, Habibi Tesema. The sentencing came nearly a month after Shefa was convicted of first-degree manslaughter, stemming from the Dec. 1, 2013, stabbing of Tesema, 48, in the married couple’s Richfield home.
The prosecution had sought a second-degree murder conviction, but Judge Elizabeth Cutter handed down a ruling for manslaughter instead, accepting the defense’s “heat of passion” argument, which was based on Shefa’s allegations that Tesema sexually abused her.
Before the judge read the sentence, friends and family of Tesema had the opportunity to make victim impact statements to the judge, as they described the victim’s life and the fallout from his death. His younger sister, Zeytuna Elies, said she is still haunted by her brother’s violent death, the result of a stab wound to the heart from a kitchen knife.
Elias said she used to enjoy cooking, but “since he was murdered, I couldn’t handle a kitchen knife,” she said. She described how Tesema helped his siblings get accustomed to life in America. They joined him in the country after he emigrated from Ethiopia in 1994. “He changed everybody’s life,” Elies said in English, a departure from the trial, when she testified through an interpreter. Read more from Current.mnsun.com »
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Richfield woman charged in husband's stabbing death
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(credit: Hennepin County Jail)
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Before the judge read the sentence, friends and family of Tesema had the opportunity to make victim impact statements to the judge, as they described the victim’s life and the fallout from his death. His younger sister, Zeytuna Elies, said she is still haunted by her brother’s violent death, the result of a stab wound to the heart from a kitchen knife.
Elias said she used to enjoy cooking, but “since he was murdered, I couldn’t handle a kitchen knife,” she said. She described how Tesema helped his siblings get accustomed to life in America. They joined him in the country after he emigrated from Ethiopia in 1994. “He changed everybody’s life,” Elies said in English, a departure from the trial, when she testified through an interpreter. Read more from Current.mnsun.com »
Related topics:
Richfield woman charged in husband's stabbing death
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