WEST CHESTER – Stabbing his former girlfriend’s new beau in the back has earned a Philadelphia man a prison sentence of more than a year, but he will not have to serve it in the state correctional system.
Darrien McBride pleaded guilty on Wednesday in Common Pleas Court to charges of aggravated assault stemming from a November incident in East Vincent. As part of a plea agreement worked out between his attorney, Evan Kelly of West Chester, and the prosecutor in the case, Deputy District Attorney Mark Conte, he was sentenced to serve 111/2 to 23 months in Chester County Prison.
However, he also agreed to waive any credit for the time he has spent in the prison since his arrest following the incident. That means he will end up serving a minimum of almost 18 months in prison before he is eligible for parole.
Normally, a sentence with a minimum term of more than a 12 months must by law be served in a state prison, a much harsher environment than the county system.
President Judge James P. MacElree II told the two attorneys involved that he normally would not have accepted a sentence calling for county time for a crime such as McBride’s. But he said he was making an exception because McBride had no criminal history and because he has strong family support, including from his father, who is a former Philadelphia police officer
McBride, 20, of South 64th Street, was arrested by East Vincent police on Nov. 26, a day after the incident involving his former girlfriend’s new boyfriend.
According to a criminal complaint filed by officer William Edes, police were called to the Park Springs apartment complex around 10:30 a.m. on Nov. 25 for the report of a disturbance with several subjects fighting.
There, officers found a man identified later as Joseph Battle sitting on the front steps of an apartment building on Park Springs Boulevard. The man had been stabbed several times in his lower back and there was a pool of blood visible on the apartment steps, the officer said.
Battle and others told the officer that the man who stabbed him was McBride, the former boyfriend of Witney Mallory whom Battle was seeing at the time.
According to Battle, McBride entered the apartment and broke a flat screen television and kicked open a closed door. He confronted Battle in a parking lot outside two apartment buildings, where the fight and stabbing occurred.
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