JAIPUR, India – A court has convicted a 16-year-old American of killing his mother while on vacation in western India because he was traumatized by his parents' divorce.
Prosecutor A.K. Sankhla says the boy was sentenced Tuesday to serve three years in an Indian juvenile detention facility for attacking Cindy Iannarelli in August 2010.
Police say the boy slit his mother's throat and left the wrapped body on a sand dune near the Osian resort in Rajasthan state. He was arrested at the airport. The knife was never found, but police say they recovered the boy's bloodied clothes.
The teenager has denied the charges. It was not immediately clear if his lawyer would appeal.
The Pennsylvania resident cannot be named because he is a minor.
His father, G. Richard Patton, a business professor at the University of Pittsburgh, would not speak about the verdict or confirm his son's name, which was widely reported before the boy's case was turned over to a juvenile court.
"We have no comment while the legal proceedings are ongoing," Patton said Wednesday from his university office.
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