Pa. high school athlete pleads guilty to Senior Week stabbing

O. Milfort (Feb. 6, 2009) Omilthong Milfort, 19, should be a senior at Blue Streaks High School in Lancaster, Pa., this year, but instead he sits in the Worcester County jail. He had been on the high school's boys basketball team, but now he awaits sentencing for an assault and a sexual offense he committed last summer when he was in Ocean City for Senior Week.

On June 16, Milfort, 18 at the time, was a sleeping passenger in a car traveling on Baltimore Avenue near 16th Street at about 3:30 a.m. when two men said something to the driver. That driver, Edward Cockrell, 18, also of Lancaster, turned around to see the men, who then reached inside and started to assault him.

One of the men, Justin Pfeiler, 21, of Baltimore, pulled Cockrell out of the car and the two began to fight. The commotion woke up Milfort, who got out of the car and joined the fray, fighting with David Grimes, 23, of Millersville, Md.

Pulling out a knife adorned with a scorpion on its handle that he had purchased on the Boardwalk, Milfort stabbed Grimes twice in the chest, then swung the knife at Pfeiler, stabbing him twice in the leg and once in the back.

Grimes was taken to Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin. Pfeiler, who was more badly injured, was flown by helicopter to Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury.

Police located Cockrell in Ocean City about 30 minutes after the stabbing. Milfort fled back to Lancaster, where police tracked him down. He was arrested by members of the Lancaster Police Department's Criminal Investigation Division, Street Enforcement Unit and K9 Unit.

In Circuit Court in Snow Hill on Tuesday, Burton Anderson, Milfort's public defender, said his client was guilty of "bringing a knife to a fistfight."

Milfort, who pleaded guilty to firstdegree assault, said he got attacked from his blind side and he used the knife to get the two men off him.

"I made a big mistake," Milfort told Judge Theodore Eschenburg. "I wish it never happened. I ask you to have mercy."

Milfort also pleaded guilty to a fourth-degree sex offense in an unrelated case that also took place in Ocean City that same week. In that case, Milfort followed an intoxicated young woman into a bathroom and had inappropriate sexual contact with her as she was getting sick.

Eschenburg, who noted that one of the knife wounds Milfort inflicted was 6 inches deep, ordered a presentence investigation in both cases.

For his part in the stabbing incident, Cockrell pleaded guilty in December with an agreed statement of facts to second-degree assault. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail, with all suspended except for the five months and 26 days he had already spent behind bars and he was given credit for time served. He was also fined $500 and put on supervised probation for three years.