Honduran Adoptee Convicted

“The adopted daughter of former President George W. Bush’s Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte has been found guilty of murder in connection to the deadly stabbing of a 24-year-old man after a drunken argument inside a Maryland Airbnb nearly three years ago.

A Montgomery County jury on Tuesday convicted Sophia Negroponte, 29, of second-degree murder in the February 2020 death of Yousuf Rasmussen, according to news reports.

She faces up to 40 years in prison at sentencing on March 31.

Sophia Negroponte was one of five abandoned or orphaned Honduran children that John Negroponte and his wife, Diana, adopted after Negroponte was appointed as U.S. ambassador to the Central American country in the 1980s, according to The Washington Post.

Sophia Negroponte and Rasmussen attended the same Washington high school and had been drinking, along with another person, on the night Rasmussen was killed, Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said. They argued twice that night and Rasmussen left the home.

When Rasmussen returned to get his cellphone, Negroponte “stabbed him multiple times, one being a death blow that severed his jugular,” McCarthy said.

A 911 call prompted county and city officers and fire rescue personnel in Rockville, Maryland, to respond to an Airbnb property on Feb. 13, 2020, at approximately 11:16 p.m. Negroponte, then 27, was found inside the home covered in blood and lying on top of Rasmussen yelling, “I’m sorry,” according to charging documents obtained by Fox News Digital.

Rasmussen was pronounced dead at the scene, and Negroponte was brought into custody, where she allegedly told investigators that she did not remember attacking the man but recalled arguing over a “silly issue” and later removing a knife from his neck.

Defense attorney David Moyse had urged jurors to consider that Sophia Negroponte was so intoxicated that night that she couldn’t form specific intent.

“Alcohol pervades this case from the start; it pervades her life,” he said, adding, “and it is absolutely at the heart of what happened there that night. And it’s one of the major reasons that this is absolutely not a murder.”

Jurors did not find Negroponte guilty of the most serious charge she faced, first-degree, premeditated murder, according to the Post. But they convicted her of second-degree murder, finding that she intended “to inflict such serious bodily harm” to Rasmussen “that death would be the likely result.”

Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Terrence J. McGann ordered her bond revoked, noting that Rasmussen was “taken from this earth, at a very young age with his whole life ahead of him, in such a horrific way.”

Adopted daughter of George W. Bush’s Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte found guilty of murder
[Yahoo 1/5/23 by Danielle Wallace and AP]

REFORM Puzzle Piece