Inset, left to right: Jazreanna A. Sheppard Gonzalez (GoFundMe) and Alyssa Partsch in court for her sentencing hearing (Law&Crime). Background: The area in Boston where Partsch stabbed and killed Gonzalez (Google Maps).
A 33-year-old woman in Massachusetts will spend up to two decades in prison for killing a 21-year-old mother she had been feuding with on social media, repeatedly stabbing the victim in the head and face during their first in-person encounter.
Associate Superior Judge Mary K. Ames on Wednesday ordered Alyssa Partsch to serve 15 to 20 years in a state correctional facility for the 2023 slaying of Jazreanna A. Sheppard Gonzalez, authorities announced.
Ames handed down the sentence after Partsch reached a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter. She had initially been charged with second-degree murder over the fatal encounter, which took place the night of Thursday, July 20, 2023.
According to a press release from the Boston Police Department, officers with District A-1 responded to the area near the 100 block of Tremont Street in downtown Boston at about 11:34 p.m. regarding reports of a stabbing. Upon arriving, first responders found Sheppard suffering from life-threatening stab wounds.
Emergency medical personnel transported her to a local hospital where she succumbed to her wounds and was pronounced dead.
Earlier that evening, Sheppard had been with a friend in Boston Common near the Brewer Fountain before the two headed toward the Park Street MBTA station, the Suffolk County District Attorney”s Office said in a Wednesday news release.
Prosecutors said the violence was preceded by a series of hostile online exchanges between Partsch and Sheppard, during which Partsch allegedly threatened the younger woman and attempted to lure her into a physical altercation.
“Both witness testimony and documentary evidence indicate that prior to July 20, Sheppard and Partsch engaged in a series of social media exchanges where Partsch threatened Sheppard and was seeking to entice her to fight,” the release states. “Evidence indicates that the two had not met in person prior to that day.”
As Sheppard approached the station pavilion, Partsch confronted her with a knife. Surveillance footage captured the pair fighting before Partsch “stabbed Sheppard several times in the face, head, and torso,” prosecutors said. Partsch then fled the scene through the MBTA system.
Investigators later built their case using witness testimony and video evidence documenting the confrontation and its violent escalation, according to prosecutors.
Authorities arrested Partsch months later, on Nov. 4, 2023, after locating her in Dorchester, Massachusetts.
At Wednesday’s sentencing hearing, members of Sheppard’s family delivered emotional victim impact statements. One relative described her as “a deeply loved human being,” adding that “her heart was poured into everyone around her.”
Ames, addressing Partsch directly, emphasized “the senselessness of the act that you committed” and the lasting impact on the victim’s loved ones.
“And I hope now that you see the consequences of what you’ve done to this family,” the judge said. “A child who will not grow up knowing his mother except through this beautiful family who will keep her memory alive.” She added that she hoped the family would someday be able to find peace.
Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden echoed those sentiments, calling the killing “a senseless, impossible-to-understand moment of violence” and praising the victim’s family members for their “heart-rending expression of their love and their loss.”
Partsch’s plea came just weeks before her trial was set to begin.
