Boy given 26 years in jail for killing playmate

updated 6:23 p.m. ET July 10, 2006

EPHRATA, Wash. - A boy convicted of stabbing a playmate to death when he was 12 years old was sentenced Monday to the maximum 26 years in prison.

A jury convicted Evan Savoie, now 15, of first-degree murder for the 2003 stabbing death of 13-year-old Craig Sorger, a developmentally disabled playmate. Despite Savoie’s youth, prosecutors tried him as an adult.

Savoie’s attorneys have said they will appeal the verdict.

Grant County Superior Court Judge Ken Jorgensen sentenced Savoie to the maximum term.

Savoie has repeatedly proclaimed he is innocent. He said Craig fell from a tree while they were playing and that he left him injured — without a pulse — on a wooded trail but didn’t kill him.

The key to the prosecution’s case was the testimony of Jake Eakin, another playmate who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder by complicity last year, two years after Craig’s death. He is serving 14 years in prison.

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