Montco man pleads guilty to killing his wife
A Montgomery County man pleaded guilty Friday to stabbing his wife to death in their home as their 6-year-old twin daughters slept upstairs.
A Montgomery County man pleaded guilty Friday to stabbing his wife to death in their home as their 6-year-old twin daughters slept upstairs.
Walid Mitwalli, 38, stabbed his wife, Mona, multiple times with a 14-inch carving knife in their Hatfield home in June 2013, prosecutors said. The couple were in the middle of a contentious divorce and custody dispute over their daughters.
Appearing in court Friday afternoon - days before his case was to go to trial - Mitwalli admitted stabbing his wife in the head, back, chest, abdomen, neck, and throat.
"It was a terrible, terrible crime," First Assistant District Attorney Kevin Steele said after a brief guilty-plea hearing.
With Mitwalli's guilty plea to third-degree murder, prosecutors agreed to drop a first-degree murder charge that would have carried a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
Jury selection had been scheduled to begin Monday morning. Defense attorney John I. McMahon Jr. said Mitwalli pleaded guilty because "this was the best of possible bad outcomes for him."
McMahon said Mitwalli has maintained since he called 911 on the night of her death that his wife came at him with a knife first.
"He took the knife off her and, unfortunately, in kind of a heat of passion and frenzy, took her life," McMahon said.
Steele said he reached a plea agreement at the urging of the victim's family, which filled the first row of the courtroom during Friday's hearing. The couple's daughters are being raised by their mother's family.
Steele said he would seek a sentence of 15 to 40 years.
Mitwalli, who has been held at the Montgomery County jail since the murder, will be sentenced later by Judge Steven T. O'Neill.
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