3/29/2010
ERIN MATHEWS
A 20-year-old Salina man with a history of mental illness who admitted to stabbing his pregnant girlfriend with a steak knife was sentenced Monday to five years in prison.
“I would like to say first that I am overwhelmingly sorry for the pain I caused,” Adam Auernheimer said before being sentenced in Saline County District Court. “I wish I could take this all back.”
Auernheimer said he was suffering from auditory and visual hallucinations on March 14, 2009, when he had a “total lapse from reality” and hit, kicked and then stabbed Amber Knopf while the two were in the kitchen of his parents’ house.
Knopf testified that her life “changed forever when Adam tried to kill me,” and she feared that if his request for probation was granted he would continue to try to hurt her or her daughter.
She said that when she was treated at Salina Regional Health Center for a collapsed lung that resulted from the injury, a doctor told her that the blade came within a fraction of an inch of killing her or her unborn child.


Read the rest of this story in Tuesday’s Salina Journal.