Life Sentence for murdering college student
Man gets life sentence for murdering college student who mistook his vehicle for an Uber ride
Nathaniel Rowland was sentenced on Tuesday to serve life in prison for the 2019 abduction and killing of Samantha Josephson, a college student who mistook Rowland’s vehicle for her Uber.
The jury took a bit longer than an hour to return a verdict that Rowland was guilty of killing the 21-year-old woman, according to the Associated Press.
“Her dreams were my dreams, and her death was my death. I close my eyes, and I feel what she endured at his hands,” the woman’s mother Marci Josephson stated during the sentencing portion of the trial Tuesday.
The University of North Carolina student entered the vehicle mistakenly believing it was an Uber that would transport her to her apartment, prosecutors said, according to the outlet.
But the young woman was trapped inside the car due to childproof locks, investigators said.
Josephson’s body was later discovered riddled with stab wounds.
On Monday Dr. Thomas Beaver, a pathologist who performed the examination of the body following Josephson’s death, spent about an hour discussing the around 120 stab wounds, though he said he did not have a specific number since they were so plentiful.
“It gets to a point where it really doesn’t add much to the report,” Beaver said, according to the AP.
There was such a low amount of blood remaining in the deceased woman’s body that workers struggled to acquire sufficient blood for routine testing, Beaver noted.
Rowland maintained his innocence prior to getting sentenced, according to the AP.
“She obviously put up an amazing fight against you and left a sufficient trail for the jury to see what you did,” Circuit Judge Clifton Newman remarked after sentencing Rowland.
