BOULDER, Colo. — A college student accused of murder in the fatal stabbing of a Greenfield native late last year was found not guilty by a Colorado jury.
Ian Scheuermann, 23, who claimed self-defense, was found not guilty Friday after a week-long trial surrounding the death of 26-year-old Sean Hudson of Greenfield, who was stabbed six times outside a bar in Boulder, Colorado, on Dec. 12 during a fight about a girl, according to police reports.
Twelve Colorado residents found Scheuermann, of Boulder, not guilty Friday of one count of second-degree murder and one count of menacing after hearing three days of testimony and spending more than three hours in deliberation, The Associated Press reports.
While prosecutors argued Scheuermann threatened Hudson and his friends earlier in the night before Hudson died, Scheuermann’s attorney told jurors his client acted in self-defense.
Throughout the case, Scheuermann said Hudson started the brawl, according to police reports. His attorney, Lisa Wayne, told jurors in closing arguments Friday morning that he grabbed a pocketknife to defend himself in the heat of the moment and was just trying to get Hudson off him, according to The Associated Press.
Investigators say Scheuermann stabbed Hudson six times, including once in the neck and once in the heart, officials said.
Scheuermann and a friend of Hudson’s had been dating the same girl, and the pair got into an argument about the woman the night Hudson died, according to a Boulder Police Department report.
Scheuermann told police someone pushed him to the ground, and he pulled a knife to defend himself. Police found him near Hudson’s body, covered in blood with the weapon clipped to his pants, reports state. He was immediately arrested, investigators said.
After his death, Hudson’s former classmates told the Daily Reporter he was a jovial and loyal man who would do anything for a friend.
Hudson was a graduate of Greenfield-Central High School. He received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Butler University in 2012 before moving on to the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he received a master’s degree in psychology in 2015.
Hudson was working toward a doctoral degree in psychology — which he received from the university posthumously earlier this year – and was working as a teaching assistant in the university’s department of psychology and neuroscience when he died, according to University of Colorado Boulder’s website.