The violence captured national headlines. The California killing was gruesome, its circumstances shocking: A woman stabbed a man to death – leaving him with 108 wounds – after smoking marijuana.

The killer’s sentence? No jail time.

The woman at the center of it all is now speaking with WGN News.

“I really thought I was going to prison,” Bryn Spejcher said.

Spejcher grew up in northwest suburban Bloomingdale with her parents, three brothers and a lot of pets.

She was diagnosed at an early age with hearing loss and has worn hearing aids since she was four years old. She discovered a passion for helping others with the same disability. After earning her Master’s degree at Washington University in St. Louis, she moved to Los Angeles to begin her career as an audiologist.

“I knew exactly that was what I wanted to do was work in the audiology field,” Spejcher said.

Her hearing service dog Arya by her side, the two spent much of their free time at a dog park in Thousand Oaks in the spring of 2018.

“Before work after work, and I would be there for hours just to let her have fun and get to know people,” Spejcher said.

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One of the people Bryn got to know was a young accountant, Chad O’Melia. A few weeks after they met, Chad was dead. Bryn was charged with his murder.

“I had no intention to hurt him, I never would hurt anybody,” Spejcher said.

The crime

It was Memorial Day weekend. After a visit to the dog park, Spejcher and O’Melia went back to his apartment, where he offered her marijuana in a bong. It was legal. Spejcher was an inexperienced user. What happened next shattered two families, when Spejcher unexpectedly became violent.

“You have no sense of time, you have no sense of morality, judgment, emotions. It’s the scariest thing,” Spejcher said. “It was like I was watching a TV screen of all these awful things happening.”

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