By Erin Bond
On Monday, Suffolk District Attorney, Rachael Rollins, announced the indictment against 21 year old Inyoung You, who, prosecutors say, had “complete and total control over her boyfriend, for an involuntary manslaughter charge for allegedly encouraging her him to end his own life through hundreds of texts.
Alexander Urtula leapt to his death from a parking garage in Boston on May 20, the day of his Boston College graduation, as his family in town from New Jersey, waited for him to arrive at the ceremony. Rollins said You had been tracking Urtula’s location on her cell phone and was “present” when he killed himself, but did not detail their interactions leading up to his death.
When Rollins was announcing the indictment on the news she also described verbal, physical, and psychological abuse during the 18-month relationship witnessed by family members and classmates. She said You would frequently manipulate Urtula and control him with threats of self-harm. Rollins continued on and said the abuse became “more frequent, more powerful and more demeaning in the days and hours leading up to Mr. Urtula’s untimely death.”
In the two months before Urtula’s suicide, the couple exchanged more than 75,000 text messages, about 47,000 of which were sent by You, Rollins said. She described “a barrage of complete and utter attacks on this man’s very will and conscience and psyche.” You, Rollins affirmed, knew she had control over Urtula’s “spiraling depression and suicidal thoughts brought on by her abuse, yet she persisted in continuing to encourage him to take his own life.”
Rollins said You is currently in South Korea and officials are “cautiously optimistic” she will return voluntarily to face the charges.
The case is fairly similar to that of Michelle Carter, a woman convicted of involuntary manslaughter for sending her boyfriend, Conrad Roy III, texts encouraging him to kill himself in 2014. Carter’s case drew international attention due thorny legal questions and the insistent tone of her texts to Roy which television show “48 Hours” covered in the episode, “Death by Text.” Due to the amount of attention on Carter’s case, state legisilation named for Roy would make suicide coercion punishable by up to five years in prison.
Although Rollins said the You case is similar, she added it is “separate and distinct” from Carter’s case due to the fact that it involved physical abuse.
“Domestic violence is not perpetrated by one type of abuser,” Rollins said. “A perpetrator is not limited by their gender or the gender of their partner. Domestic violence may not always look the same, but it is always about power and control.”
Source: CNN
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