Magisterial District Judge Sonya M. McKnight being escorted by police (PennLive.com screenshot) and mug shot (Dauphin County Central Booking)
A 58-year-old former magistrate judge in Pennsylvania will likely spend decades behind bars for trying to kill her boyfriend, shooting the 55-year-old man in the head while he slept in his home last year. A jury in Lancaster County on Wednesday found Sonya M. McKnight guilty on charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault in the attack that left Michael McCoy permanently blind in one eye, authorities announced.
Jurors heard two days of testimony before deliberating and convicting McKnight, who previously shot her estranged husband in the groin in an incident that was determined to be self-defense.
According to a news release from the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office, the shooting took place in the early morning hours of Saturday, Feb. 10, 2024, at McCoy’s home in the 200 block of Saddle Ridge Drive in Dauphin County.
“McKnight shot the victim in the head while the victim was sleeping in bed,” prosecutors wrote in the release. “The bullet entered the right side of the victim’s face, traversed through his head in a straight line behind and slightly below his eyes and exited the left side of his face. The victim survived the gunshot wound but is blind in one eye as a result.”
While the shooting took place in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, the Cumberland County DA’s Office assumed jurisdiction of the investigation at the request of Dauphin County DA Fran Chardo. Chardo explained that his office had a conflict of interest and could not prosecute the case because McKnight was a magisterial district judge in the county.
Chardo had initially requested that the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office take jurisdiction over the case, but the AG’s office also said it had a conflict of interest in prosecuting McKnight.
