Fatally Stabbed Army Officer Will Get Memorial At UMD: Report

COLLEGE PARK, MD — The University of Maryland will build a memorial remembering an Army officer who was fatally stabbed on campus in 2017, The Washington Post reported Monday.

Officials said the killer, Sean Urbanski, is a member of a white supremacist social media group called Alt Reich Nation. The victim, 23-year-old Richard Collins III, is Black.

Collins was a senior graduating from Bowie State University and a commissioned lieutenant in the U.S. Army. On May 20, 2017, Collins was out celebrating his upcoming graduation on the College Park campus.

While Collins was waiting at a bus stop, Urbanski approached him and said "Step left. Step left if you know what’s best for you," the Prince George's County state's attorney noted. The prosecution alleged Collins replied "No," and Urbanski stabbed him 3.5 inches in the chest with a 3-inch blade.

A report indicated Collins died soon after, and police spotted Urbanski nearby.

A jury found Urbanski, now 25, guilty of first-degree murder on December 18, 2019. A judge sentenced him to life in prison with the possibility of parole on Jan. 14, the Associated Press wrote.

The news outlet added the judge dropped Urbanski's hate crime charge because prosecutors could not prove that race was the only reason for the attack.

AP reported Maryland changed its hate crime law earlier this year. Hate crimes are now defined as ones that are completely or substantially motivated by a victim's "race, color, religious belief, sexual orientation, gender, disability or national origin," journalist Michael Kunzelman elaborated.

Kunzelman explained the judge sentenced Urbanski before this new law took hold, so the prosecution faced an uphill battle with the "hate crime" label.

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