An Augusta man who was serving a 12-year sentence in the Maine State Prison in Warren for the stabbing death of his domestic partner died early Wednesday morning, authorities said in a news release.
The man, 45-year-old Michael T. Young, died around 6 a.m. Wednesday, said Joseph Fitzpatrick, commissioner of the Maine Department of Corrections, in the news release.
The department did not announce the cause of Young’s death immediately, but a spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety said Young recently had been sick and that the death did not appear suspicious.
“He had been ill for quite some time,” Steve McCausland said.
McCausland did not know the nature of that illness, but in 2011 Young told police he suffered from anemia and said that on the day of the stabbing he was sick because of repeated blood tests.
The state medical examiner also is reviewing the cause of the death in accordance with corrections department policy and the attorney general’s protocols, Fitzpatrick said.
Young’s earliest possible release date was Sept. 6, 2017, according to the corrections department website.
He had served four years of a 12-year sentence — all but six years suspended with four years of probation — for the stabbing death of David Cox, a man he was living with in June 2011. In December 2012, Young pleaded guilty to a charge of manslaughter in Kennebec County Superior Court, but he did not admit killing Cox, a 46-year-old Army veteran. Rather, Young entered an Alford plea, a plea bargain in which a defendant essentially pleads guilty without admitting guilt.
Young had called police at 5:15 a.m. on June 11, 2011, frantically begging them to come to their Green Street apartment and help Cox. Young, whose hands and shorts were covered in blood when police arrived, told them he had been ill and in bed and got up after hearing a bang to find Cox in the kitchen, slumped over Young’s bicycle and with a knife in his chest.
The medical examiner later determined Cox died from a stab wound to the heart.
Charles Eichacker — 621-5642
Twitter: @ceichacker
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