Ainsley Panton (Waterbury Police Department) and the scene outside the house where he killed his wife (WTIC screenshot)
A 30-year-old man in Connecticut will spend more than three decades behind bars for killing his 24-year-old wife in a gruesome fashion, hacking her to death with a machete inside their house while small children were present.
New Haven Superior District Court Judge Joseph B. Schwartz ordered Ainsley Panton to serve a sentence of 33 years in a state correctional facility for the 2022 slaying of Moesha Watson Panton.
The sentence was handed down about three months after Panton in October pleaded guilty to one count of murder in his wife’s death.
“The defendant viciously slaughtered his wife, inflicting horrific injuries as she attempted to flee for her life,” said Waterbury State’s Attorney Maureen T. Platt in a statement. “While nothing will bring her back or end the suffering of her family and friends, it is my hope that the knowledge that this admitted killer will no longer be able to harm others will provide some solace.”
As reported by Law&Crime, the incident occurred just after 10 a.m. on April 26, 2022, in Waterbury, Connecticut. Moesha Panton was initially able to escape her assailant and make it outside of the home, but she collapsed in the middle of the street, where she died a short while later.
Waterbury firefighters were the first to arrive at the scene. They were returning from an unrelated call when they spotted the horrific scene and stopped to give aid.
“They saw a female that was in distress in the roadway,” Waterbury Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo said following Ainsley Panton’s arrest. “They went and investigated that particular incident and realized she needed medical attention.”
Police officers arrived a short while later. Moesha Panton was found with multiple cuts to her neck, wrist and elsewhere.
Investigators said Moesha Panton was stabbed during a domestic violence incident earlier that morning inside the house where she and Panton lived with their four children. Moesha Panton’s 3-year-old and 5-year-old were home at the time, police said, while two older children were at school then.
“At some point during that domestic violence incident, Ainsley Panton did stab Moesha a number of times throughout her body,” Spagnolo said.
Moesha Panton, who had moved to the United States from Jamaica in 2011, married Ainsley Panton in 2021 and was on the cusp of finishing nursing school at the time of her death.
The two children were later found hiding inside the house, prosecutors said. They were taken to the Waterbury Hospital for an evaluation and then placed in the custody of the Connecticut Department of Children and Families.
“I heard those kids crying,” Marquetta Gill, a neighbor, told Hartford, Connecticut, Fox affiliate WTIC. “I couldn’t even imagine something like that occurring and that would be my kids or something. You know, it’s sad now. Those kids have no mother, no father.”
