FREEPORT — The Freeport man convicted of killing his Monroe ex-girlfriend in front of their baby was sentenced Jan. 22 to 52 years in prison.
Chad M. Blaser, 24, pleaded guilty in November to fatally stabbing 21-year-old Gabby Petsche on a Freeport street corner.
Blaser declined to address the court at his sentencing, but his defense attorney noted “Chad feels remorse for what has happened and he chose to take responsibility for his actions” by pleading guilty, according to the Freeport Journal Standard.
Stephenson County State’s Attorney Carl Larson called the 52-year sentence “certainly within the realm of reasonableness” because it “would have the defendant out of prison at 75.”
“I’m confident that should he live to that age, at that point, he won’t be a threat to society any further,” Larson said, according to the Journal Standard.
Petsche’s mother, Georgia Petsche, posted publicly to Facebook after the sentencing that “justice didn’t reach its full capability” but that she is “glad that at least he will pay for his actions and never be able to harm anyone else ever again!”
Nothing, and no amount of time, “could ever justify that Gabby is gone and gone forever,” she wrote.
Blaser told police he “blacked out” during an argument with Petsche over child visitation and admitted to punching and stabbing her, according to WTVO-TV. At his sentencing, witnesses said they heard Petsche plead with her attacker to “please stop.”
Blaser was riding in a car with Petsche when he started stabbing her as she drove on West Avenue, causing her to crash into a snow pile at the intersection with Pleasant Street, and he continued stabbing her outside the vehicle before fleeing the scene, according to Freeport police.
Blaser and Petsche’s infant son, her only child, was in the backseat of the car.
Blaser was arrested nearby within minutes. Petsche died later that night in a hospital with dozens of stab wounds to her head, back and abdomen.
Prosecutors said Blaser had blood on his clothing and hands and asked “I didn’t do her too bad, did I?” when he surrendered, WTVO-TV reported.
Blaser has misdemeanor domestic abuse convictions on his record from 2017, according to Illinois court records. At the time of the attack, Blaser was out on bond for felony domestic abuse charges in Wisconsin that he caused a disturbance and threw rocks at a vehicle outside Petsche’s home in Monroe. That case remains open.
Petsche was remembered in her obituary as a “passionate young woman who had an infinite love for her son, Daymien William,” now 2 years old. Petsche’s friends and family and her coworkers at Stoughton Trailers in Brodhead collected donations to help the boy in the wake of his mother’s murder.