< Back to front page Text size – +

Witness: Odgren said he ‘just snapped’ before fatal stabbing

E-mail|Link April 15, 2010 11:50 AM

By Milton Valencia, Globe Staff

WOBURN -- John Odgren, the teenager accused of fatally stabbing a classmate in a Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School bathroom in 2007, said right after the attack that he had "just snapped," a witness testified today at Odgren's murder trial.

In the minutes after the attack, Odgren knelt by James F. Alenson and began patting his back. He acknowledged he had attacked Alenson, but insisted he didn't mean to do it, said Tracie Lopez, a special education teacher at the Sudbury school.

Lopez said she asked Odgren what he was doing, and he responded, "I killed him. I don't know why. I just snapped. He's dying."

"I asked him if he was joking," Lopez said. "He said, 'No, this is not a joke. Get help.'"

Judith Katalina, a campus security official at the school, said that as she approached Alenson, Odgren tapped her on the shoulder.

"Don't let him die. It was all me. I did this. I just went crazy," she recalled Odgren saying.

Odgren was 16 and Alenson was 15 at the time of the Jan. 19, 2007 slaying. Odgren, now 19, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Prosecutors have said in the Middlesex Superior Court trial that Odgren was driven to kill that day, to act out violent stories he had seen and read in video games and Stephen King novels.

But Odgren's attorneys say that the teenager, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, hyperactive disorder, and possibly bipolar disorder, was so involved in his games and stories that he lost touch with the real world.