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Craig J. Challon, who broke into his estranged girlfriend’s Huntington Beach apartment and fatally stabbed him on the day he changed lock and locked him out, was sentenced to 26 years in prison on Friday.
Laura Sardinha, 25, was pursuing an online psychology degree in hopes of counselling women in abusive relationships. She was trying to escape her relationship with Chalong, who had her eardrums in the hole in her previous attack.
On Friday, three months after the ju judge convicted Charlon of first-degree murder in his September 2020 death, Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael Cassidy called it a “meaningless and brutal” crime and gave him the largest sentence allowed by law.
“What Laura wanted was to be free from abuse and pain,” Marie Sardinia, the victim’s mother, told the judge. “This guy should not go out into society. He should never be let go.”
The victim’s brother, Sean Sardinia, said she had a hard time finding a reason to live after her sister’s death.
“I’m now giving the blue vase the latest updates on my life,” he said.
At the trial, 39-year-old Charlon said he was an Air Force veteran and a former combat medic, rated him a 100% disability rating. He was undergoing psychiatric treatment at the VA.
In the sentence, Chalong wore a green camouflage club given to prisoners who served in the military, and his lawyer said that Charlon was in the county prison veterans program.
The victim’s father said he was a Vietnamese veteran and disliked the suggestion that Chalong might bring about as a veterinarian.
“It just makes me sick,” Manuel Sardinia told the judge. He recalled how she plays “The Twelve of Christmas” on the piano at her family’s house on vacation. He said injuries in a 2019 motorcycle accident derailed culinary school ambitions, but she planned to use financial settlements to open medical practices.
Chalon had been dating Sardinia for several months. She gave him nearly $100,000 out of the $750,000 he won in the settlement of the accident.
Two weeks before he killed her, she texted him saying he couldn’t hear him because he had broken his eardrum. She complained that he hit her. He told police that her injuries were the result of “rough sex” and reduced the charges to her.
On the morning of her death, she begged him to leave her apartment herself, saying, “You will terrify me because you will not leave.”
When he finally left, he attacked her with a phone call and text, she ignored it. That afternoon, upon her request, the maintenance worker changed her lock to keep him out.
Despite this, Chalong managed to slip down around 1:15pm – it’s not clear when she was making a three-way call with her mother and her best friend. They heard her scream, “Oh my god, he’s here.”
My friend called 911 and relaxed. Sardinia calls her and says, “He’s going to kill me!”
His voice was creepy absent from voicemail, but prosecutors suggested it was a function of his calculated, laid back thinking when killing her.
She was dead when police arrived, but had stab wounds on her chest and head. He was almost sliced through her nose. Police found Charlon with knife wounds on his chest and neck. Authorities suggested that she gave her to create the fiction that attacked him.
Deputy district. Atty. Janine Madera said that it doesn’t matter whether he fakes the wounds or she gave him them in self-defense, as he was a clear invader towering with muscularity over her nine inches each.
Three of Chalong’s ex-girlfriends who issued restraint orders against him testified that he assaulted them. He said he suffocated her, the moment he slapped her he pinned her to the wall.
Chalon argued that the conflict with Sardinia was “hazy” in his memory, but he acted in self-defense. Defence counsel Michael Guist said his client’s violent history was made up of “non-crowd violence” and he may have acted in a heat of passion when he killed Sardinia.
Chalong did not make a statement or apologize in Friday’s ruling.
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