Boy given 26 years in jail for killing playmate

12-year-old who denies the murder charges tried as an adult

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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.

Story continues below ↓

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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.