BOSTON, Feb. 26, 2015—Anthony Spaulding, stabbed to death outside his Allston home by a man who showed up uninvited to a New Year’s Eve party, was recalled as “selfless, loving, and brilliant” as his killer was sentenced to prison today, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

BRIAN MacDONALD (D.O.B. 4/7/88) of Brighton was convicted Feb. 20 of voluntary manslaughter for stabbing Spaulding, then 22, in the chest outside Spaulding’s Pratt Street home. Assistant District Attorney Julie Higgins of the DA’s Homicide Unit recommended the maximum penalty for that offense, a term of 15 to 20 years in state prison, citing “the vicious, violent, senseless actions of the defendant” and the fact that Spaulding was unarmed when he sustained multiple stab wounds to the heart, liver, and back that went as deep as seven inches.

Suffolk Superior Court Judge Janet Sanders imposed a term of seven to 10 years.

Sanders also scheduled a June 18 retrial for MacDonald’s co-defendant, BIANCA HOLLENBECK (D.O.B. 7/28/88), who was indicted for assault and battery for allegedly assaulting Spaulding before he was killed. Jurors declared themselves deadlocked on that charge.

Prior to MacDonald’s sentencing, Spaulding’s mother, sister, and close friends took the witness stand to recall a young man who, his girlfriend said, “was poised on the brink of a happy and successful future.”

Directing her remarks to the judge, Spaulding’s mother described her son – a student at the New England Institute of Art – as kind, generous, and beloved.

“You would have liked my son,” she said. “I’d give anything for five minutes just to talk to him again.”

She also turned to the courtroom’s gallery, full of young men and women who knew her son in life, and spoke of the friends and housemates who held and comforted him as he died.

“I want to thank the boys who were there when he died,” she said. “I’ll love those boys forever.”

MacDonald was an uninvited guest at Spaulding’s Pratt Street home, where residents held a party on the night of Dec. 31, 2012, into the morning of Jan. 1, 2013.

Higgins proved that MacDonald was on the second floor of that home near Spaulding’s bedroom. When he and another person became boisterous in that area, Spaulding came out of the bedroom and asked him to keep his voice down. That interaction sparked a physical altercation. The two men tumbled down a set of stairs onto the first floor.

MacDonald and his associate were ejected from the party but lingered outside. Spaulding approached them, Higgins argued, in an attempt to clear the air. Instead, the evidence showed, MacDonald stabbed Spaulding in the chest with a folding knife he had brought to the party. Spaulding’s friends called 911 and emergency medical technicians transported him to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, but he died of his injuries.

MacDonald cut himself on the knife and left a blood trail as he fled the scene. Boston Police followed that trail to his Washington Street apartment, where they found his bloody clothes in a garbage bag. The knife was never recovered.

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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.