A Pennsylvania resident has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the brutal murder of his girlfriend, followed by a failed suicide attempt beside her lifeless body.

In September, a Lackawanna County jury found 57-year-old Donnell Brunson guilty of first-degree murder and risking catastrophe.

This week, Judge Michael Barrasse of the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas handed down a mandatory life sentence for the murder conviction. Additionally, Brunson received an 18 to 24-month sentence for risking catastrophe, with both sentences to be served consecutively.

The tragic events unfolded in November 2023 when Brunson violently assaulted his 49-year-old girlfriend, Danielle Barbuti, leading to her death.

According to court documents from The Times-Tribune, the couple went to bed together on November 28, 2023.

But the man was suspicious the woman was cheating on him, he would later tell detectives. And, instead of confronting her with his jealous thoughts, he decided to destroy the victim in a fit of rage.

When Brunson woke up at 7 a.m., he began to brutalize Barbuti.

First, the soon-to-be killer delivered five or six punches to the woman’s still-sleeping head using his right fist, then he punched her with his left fist once or twice, he admitted. After that, he beat her with a ceramic ashtray, covered her face with his hands, and finally used a pillow as the final implement of death to silence her screams.

After the carnage, and becoming a killer, he himself wanted to die.

“Brunson stated that he knew that he only had two choices at that point: leave and commit suicide or go to jail for the rest of his life,” police wrote in a charging document obtained by the paper.

To try and kill himself, Brunson swallowed a large number of sleeping pills, slashed one of his wrists with an X-Acto brand craft knife, and then turned on the gas stove inside Barbuti’s apartment — that last action in order to cause an explosion, he eventually confessed.

But that explosion never came.

Instead, Brunson woke up around 4 p.m. that day to the sound of Barbuti’s sister repeatedly calling the dead woman’s cellphone. He told police he was surprised he was still alive because his dying that day was “how it was supposed to end.”

The defendant “recounted that her leg felt cold” when he awoke late that afternoon, according to the charging document. Then, detectives wrote, Brunson “knew he had to leave the scene as soon as possible” and covered Barbuti’s face with a blanket. After that, he washed away some of the blood on his body and left the scene of the crime.

Barbuti’s sister eventually stopped calling and went directly to the apartment. The victim was supposed to babysit for her sister that day and never showed up — but she never canceled either. Detectives wrote that the victim’s sister found the door of the apartment open and went inside, making the worst discovery of her life.

The woman’s formal cause of death was found to be asphyxia.

Blood was all over when police arrived. Responding officers found the bloodied X-Acto knife, another knife, an open pill bottle with Brunson’s name on it, a bloody handprint on a wall near the bed, a blood-covered bag, and diluted blood in the sink.

Still, Brunson’s desire for death did not end when he left Barbuti’s apartment, police noted. After leaving, the defendant stopped at a store where he bought two bottles of sleeping pills, a bottle of ibuprofen, and a bottle of water. The killer continued to consume pills as he drove — finally settling on the idea of breaking into a mobile home he had previously worked on to try killing himself again.

“Brunson stated that if he were able to move, he would have jumped to initiate contact, resulting in police shooting him,” detectives wrote.

Brunson was later traced to the mobile home using his cellphone records. Law enforcement found him under a blanket. Police described another bloody scene: his hands were red, the mobile home covered in blood, a crimson stain on his vehicle’s steering wheel.

During Brunson’s sentencing hearing, Barbuti’s sister spoke poignantly of the woman she lost violently, too soon, and forever.

“She loved the cookie baking, the meatball rolling, singing, all of it,” the sister said, according to a courtroom report by the Times-Tribune, saying the loss was especially pronounced around the holidays.

The victim’s sister then turned her attention to Brunson himself – chiding the killer for depriving his own children of their father.

“You shattered two families,” she added.

The killer, for his part, expressed some remorse for the slaying during his allocution, the paper reported. Brunson also, however, claimed the woman had a dark side no one but him ever saw and described a series of devil-themed objects he claimed were in her possession. Those alleged objects were never found.

During her own impact statement, the victim’s sister-in-law expressed outrage at Brunson’s last-ditch claims of fearing Barbuti.

“You expect us to believe you were afraid for your life?” she asked out loud, also asking the killer why he did not simply leave if he felt the relationship had gone in the wrong direction.

“Thank you for your trust,” Brunson texted Barbuti the night before she died. “It’s nice to know that you see I’m in love with you so much that I would never do anything to hurt you.”