A woman who stabbed her husband to death in a fight over a cake said Friday that she misses him every day.
A judge sentenced her to five years in prison for voluntary manslaughter. “It’s just absolutely senseless that something like that would happen over a cake,” Judge Carl E. Eason Jr. said at the sentencing in circuit court.
Annette Lavail Alston, 40, told Eason that her argument last year on Thanksgiving weekend with George A. Banks Jr. “got out of hand.”
The fight began in the couple’s home when Alston tried to leave with a chocolate cake she had baked, according to testimony at a preliminary hearing. During the fight, Alston stabbed her husband once in the upper chest with a kitchen knife, prosecutor Will Jamerson said.
Alston said Friday that she never meant to kill her husband. She pleaded guilty in July to voluntary manslaughter, a charge that meant she acted without premeditation.
“If I could bring him back, I would,” Alston said Friday. “I love my husband.”
Warren Kozak, Alston’s attorney, said the couple was married about three years and had no children together.
Several relatives of Alston and Banks attended the sentencing. Banks’ sister Elanor Scott testified on how the killing has affected her family. She said Banks “died by the hands of someone he loved so much.”
Alston apologized to the Banks family, but Jamerson said she has shown no remorse for the killing. He asked for a 10-year prison term.
Eason sentenced Alston to serve nine years and suspended four. He added 10 years of supervised probation and ordered her to pay $5,000 in restitution for Banks’ funeral.
