University of Hartford Student Accused of Stabbing Classmates During Acting Exercise

University of Hartford Student Accused of Stabbing Classmates During Acting Exercise

A University of Hartford student named Jake Wascher was acting out a scene from a movie when he allegedly stabbed two classmates. He fled the scene, but was arrested later and now faces criminal charges.

Brian Pascus reports at CBS News:

Hartford student accused of stabbing classmates was acting out movie scene, police say

A 21-year-old University of Hartford student accused of stabbing two fellow students in Connecticut was acting out a scene for a school assignment, according to Hartford Police. Jack Wascher of San Diego, California, was arrested Sunday and charged with first-degree assault and criminal attempt to commit murder.

According to Hartford Police, on Sunday afternoon, Wascher and two other University of Hartford students were rehearsing a scene from a movie as part of a class assignment, one that called for a stabbing to occur, when Wascher stabbed both victims before running away on foot.

Hartford’s campus experienced a chaotic scene Sunday. Police received calls at 1:31 p.m. regarding a stabbing at the university. They discovered two male victims at the scene. Police said a 21-year-old suffered a puncture wound to the chest and four to his back. He was listed in stable condition.

According to the Daily Beast, the students were acting out a scene from the 2004 film The Butterfly Effect:

A University of Hartford drama student is accused of stabbing two classmates while practicing a scene from the 2004 movie thriller The Butterfly Effect for a class project, Hartford police said Monday…

In The Butterfly Effect, college student Evan Treborn, played by Kutcher, is afflicted with severe headaches that cause him to frequently black out. While unconscious, Kutcher’s character is able to travel back in time to painful moments in his childhood and alter the past for his friends—an act that puts himself in nightmarish alternate realities.

Police are unclear on what led Wascher to go from play-acting a violent scene to actually stabbing his classmates.

“We don’t know what the motive is, we don’t know what happened,” Cicero said.

Here’s a video report from CBS News:

Mikaela Porter of the Hartford Courant reports that Wascher is talking to police. What he is telling them will not aid his defense:

University of Hartford drama student charged in stabbing in school dorm told police he was ‘curious’ about ‘what it would be like to stab someone’

A University of Hartford student accused of stabbing two classmates while they filmed a movie in a campus dorm Sunday, first told police he was not acting and was “curious what it would be like to stab someone” but later told police he was acting and his emotions got the best of him, a police report says…

During a video interview with a Hartford police detective, Wascher first claimed he wasn’t acting at the time of the assault but then said he was “’into his character’” and ‘my emotions got the best of me, and I acted a little to [sic] hard,'” according to a police report released Monday. Police said the students were re-enacting a scene from the 2004 movie “The Butterfly Effect.”

Featured image via YouTube.

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