PITTSBURGH _ Alex Hribal pleaded guilty Tuesday to 21 counts each of attempted homicide and aggravated assault in the April 2014 knife attack at Franklin Regional High School.
Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court Judge Christopher Feliciani will sentence him at a later hearing, likely in January, though he is expected to spend decades in prison.
Wearing navy jail scrubs, handcuffs and chains at his waist, Hribal, 20, spoke only to answer the judge's questions.
Feliciani read the charges against him, naming each of the victims and where on their bodies they were wounded. Asked if he understood each alleged crime and how he would plead, Hribal said "yes, sir" and "guilty."
When the judge asked why he was filing this plea, he answered quietly, "Because I am guilty."
Hribal's parents, Tina and Harold Hribal of Murrysville, sat in the courtroom behind their son; Mrs. Hribal clutched a stuffed monkey, her son's childhood toy. Victims of the April 9, 2014, attack sat elsewhere but didn't speak. They are expected to provide victim-impact statements at the sentencing hearing.
Hribal was 16 when he slashed or stabbed 20 students and a security guard in a hallway of the school with two kitchen knives from home. Four students suffered life-threatening injuries, but all survived.
His attorney, Patrick Thomassey, in 2015 tried to get the case moved to juvenile court, where, if found responsible for the crimes, Hribal would have been free at age 21. Later he requested to enter a guilty but mentally ill plea, a distinction that would have meant prison time only if his condition improved with treatment first at a mental health facility. Feliciani denied both requests.
Essentially, the attorney said, he'd exhausted his options, and the Hribal family wished to spare victims from recounting their stories at a trial set for next month and yet again at sentencing.
"We didn't have too much choice but to enter a plea. Every motion I filed was denied by the court.
"How do you defend the case? It's not a whodunit," Thomassey continued. "There is no insanity defense because he's not insane. ... It's time to put a case to an end."
In the penalty phase, he'll argue "for as light a sentence as I can."
Defense experts who evaluated Hribal in 2014 said at the time that he suffered from depression and had characteristics associated with schizophrenia. During the hearing, Hribal told the judge he's been taking an anti-depressant. Thomassey said he has received no recent mental health treatment, though.
In the days leading up to the attack, police said Hribal had written a disturbing manifesto on notebook paper in which he made general threats to his high school peers and praised the teenagers who carried out the Columbine massacre.
District Attorney John Peck said he would support a 30- to 60-year sentence, the same offer he made to the defense last year, which Thomassey rejected. Hribal could be sentenced to more than 800 years if the maximum sentences were imposed consecutively, the judge noted, though that isn't likely to happen.
Peck met last week with victims and their families at the Franklin Regional High School library to discuss the upcoming conclusion of the case.
