A Harvard University graduate student remains in jail awaiting trial for murder after he was denied bail by the Cambridge District Court on Friday, April 18.
Alexander Pring-Wilson, 25, a student at Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, was accused of fatally stabbing Michael Colono, an 18-year-old Cambridge man, in the early morning of April 12.
Colono and two friends were sitting in a vehicle outside a local pizza parlor when Pring-Wilson allegedly approached the vehicle. Colono got out of the car, and a verbal and physical altercation allegedly followed between Colono and Pring-Wilson, according to a statement from the Middlesex District Attorney's office.
Following the incident, Colono returned to the car and his friends noticed that he was bleeding. They drove him to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where he was pronounced dead several hours later.
Cambridge Police received a 911 call shortly before 2 a.m., but reported that they found no victim at the scene, near Western Avenue and Howard Street.
Police later arrested Pring-Wilson on Saturday morning in Cambridge "without incident," according to the district attorney's office.
Jeffrey Denner, Pring-Wilson's attorney, told The Harvard Crimson his client maintains that he did not instigate either the verbal or physical altercation and that stabbing Colono was an act of self-defense.
The case has ignited a strong reaction from members of the Harvard community and others.
Before Pring-Wilson's trial, Judge Severlin Singleton III received 60 letters sent by professors, friends and family members supporting Pring-Wilson.
Pring-Wilson's supporters maintained a large presence in the courtroom April 18, as did Colono's friends and family, who cheered when Singleton's decision to deny bail was announced in the courtroom, The Crimson reported.
Pring-Wilson is currently taking an extended leave of absence from the university, according to Harvard Director of Communications for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Bob Mitchell, who would not comment further on the situation.
