{"id":632,"date":"2011-01-11T00:23:08","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T05:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/?p=1063"},"modified":"2011-01-14T16:20:26","modified_gmt":"2011-01-14T21:20:26","slug":"former-lacrosse-player-on-trial-for-killing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/?p=632","title":{"rendered":"Former Lacrosse Player on trial for killing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After his arrest,<br \/>\nChad Gurney calmly confessed to police how he had cut off her<br \/>\nhead and set her body on fire, a prosecutor said Monday. Gurney,<br \/>\n29, is using an insanity defense in the May 25, 2009,<br \/>\nritualistic-style killing of 18-year-old Zoe Sarnacki in his<br \/>\nPortland apartment. But Assistant District Attorney Don Macomber<br \/>\nsaid in his opening statement that Gurney wasn\u2019t delusional or<br \/>\nsuffering hallucinations in the time leading up to or after the<br \/>\nslaying, and that the evidence will prove he wasn\u2019t insane. Gurney<br \/>\nwas raised in central Maine and attended Liberty University in<br \/>\nVirginia after high school. While at Liberty, he was severely<br \/>\ninjured in March 2005 when a school passenger van carrying the<br \/>\nlacrosse team was rear-ended by another school van in Alabama and<br \/>\npushed into the path of a tractor-trailer. After the accident,<br \/>\nGurney suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression,<br \/>\ndefense attorney Sarah Churchill said. It was a \u201cperfect storm\u201d of<br \/>\nconditions \u2014 his injuries, chronic pain, withdrawing from his<br \/>\nmedication and new ideas from friends \u2014 that prevented him from<br \/>\nappreciating the wrongfulness of killing Sar-nacki, she said.<br \/>\nGurney and Sarnacki met earlier in the year and had been dating for<br \/>\na short time, although not exclusively. Macomber suggested that<br \/>\nGurney was angered by Sarnacki\u2019s admission that she had slept with<br \/>\nsomeone else while he was visiting a friend in British Columbia.<br \/>\nShe later refused his request to quit her job at a bagel shop and<br \/>\njoin him on a trip to Thailand, where he hoped to further his<br \/>\ninterest in Eastern religion. Gurney suggested his anger had gotten<br \/>\nthe best of him when he called friends before his arrest and<br \/>\nadmitted what he had done, Macomber said. \u201cHe told them she had<br \/>\ndone something that had hurt him and he was tired of being hurt,<br \/>\nand he lost it,\u201d Macomber said. via <a\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.bangordailynews.com\/story\/Statewide\/Trial-to-focus-on-mental-state-of-man-who-admitted-killing-girlfriend,163568\"\ntarget=\"_blank\">Bangor Daily News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After his arrest, Chad Gurney calmly confessed to police how he had cut off her head and set her body on fire, a prosecutor said&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/?p=632\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Former Lacrosse Player on trial for killing<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pJcR0-ac","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":646,"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions\/646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}