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Andreas Erazo leaves the courtroom of Superior Court Judge David Bauman on Friday, May 31, 2019, in Freehold, New Jersey, after being sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 11-year-old Abbiegail Smith. (Thomas P. Costello / The Asbury Park Press via AP, Pool)
FREEHOLD, N.J. – A New Jersey man who admitted to raping and killing his 11-year-old neighbor was sentenced to life in prison on Friday, three months after pleading guilty on the eve of his trial.
Andreas Erazo, 20, will serve 85% of his sentence, about 64 years, before being released on parole at the end of his sentence.
Andreas Erazo pleaded guilty to murder and aggravated sexual assault in February, following the death of Abbiegail Smith in Keansburg, County Monmouth.
Smith was reported missing on the evening of July 12, 2017. The next morning, the investigators found her body, wrapped in a duvet on the roof near the building where she and Erazo lived.
Erazo first claimed that he had stabbed the girl because he thought she was an intruder. He conceded later that it was false and confessed to having raped and killed her.
Smith's father, Kenroy Smith, lives in Jamaica where he was deported in 2001 after a marijuana arrest. Kennish Smith, his sister, and Abbiegail, were denied temporary visas allowing them to attend the funeral of the girl, despite Kenroy Smith's public appeal to President Donald Trump. At the time, the State Department stated that the law prohibited the disclosure of details on individual visa cases.
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