A 17-year-old Las Vegas teen has been sentenced to a mininum of 16 years for the savage attack of his high school teacher that left her near death.

Jonathan Martinez-Garcia, a former student at El Dorado High School, punched and choked his female teacher into unconsciousness, raped her and then tried to slit her wrists before he attempted to trap her under heavy bookshelves during the April 7, 2022 attack. 

The victim, identified only as Sade, survived but suffered trauma and multiple injuries.

Garcia pled guilty on Wednesday at the Regional Justice Center to attempted murder, attempted sexual assault, and battery with use of a deadly weapon resulting in substantial bodily harm that left his victim with trauma and mutliple injuries. 

Clark County District Court Judge Kathleen Delaney, sentenced Martinez-Garcia to a minimum of 16 to 40 years behind bars, the Associated Press reported. 

Prosecutors asked the judge for a more stringent sentence that would include a minimum of 22 to 55 years behind bars, but Judge Delaney said she was ‘balancing the seriousness of the crime with other factors,’ the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. 

In April, Garcia got a plea deal that avoided trial in the after school attack after he pled guilty to attempted sexual assault and battery with use of a deadly weapon resulting in substantial bodily harm. 

Other charges against him were also dropped, The Associated Press reported. 

At the sentencing, Garcia- Martinez dressed in navy blue prison clothes apologized and said he regretted what he had done. 

He told the courtroom he blames no one but himself and said that he was ready to ‘accept the consequences,’ KSNV reported. 

This was the victim’s first teaching position, the news outlet reported.

Ty Gaston, Garcia’s court-appointed attorney, said Garcia’s erratic behavior were side effects of an asthma medication he was on that caused hallucinations, mood changes, and night terrors, the Review-Journal reported.

Gaston said: ‘He was no history of anything but being a perfect loving kid.’

The brutal attack occurred after Garcia went to his teacher’s classroom after school hours to discuss his grades. Police said he locked the classroom door before he viciously beat her.

Images of some of the injuries she sustained were shown in the courtroom.  

The victim told the court, ‘he beat my body so badly that I couldn’t fight.’

‘One of the times I woke, I found myself trapped under heavy shelves that he toppled over me to where my breathing was suppressed, and I was being crushed to near death,’ she recalled. 

‘I truly believed with everything in me that I was going to die right there under those shelves.’

Sade also said ‘it only makes sense that he should be in prison for as long as possible,’ KLAS reported. 

Garcia fled after the attack and took the teacher’s keys. The instructor was later found by a school employee who called 911.  

Garcia who attends ROTC was arrested shortly after by school police while he was on his way to an award ceremony at the school.

His mother described Garcia as a ‘good student.’ She said he hadn’t been diagnosed with any medical or mental disabilities,’ but told police that he seemed ‘depressed and disconnected’ in recent months.

In the arrest report Garcia talks about the attack on his teacher with detectives.

He said: ‘I don’t know why I attacked her, she was good to me.’

During the sentencing, prosecutors said that the teacher remembers Garcia saying repeatedly: ‘Why won’t you die?’ 

Sade told the judge that she did not return to her teaching job after the attack because she felt mentally and physically ‘imprisoned,’ AP reported. 

The Judge said the attack on educators is unacceptable

She said: ‘It is the most heinous type of crime there could be.’

Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk