Man pleads guilty to ’14 assault on worker

A man serving a 40-year prison sentence for raping and killing his Danvers High School algebra teacher when he was 14 pleaded guilty Friday to assaulting a Department of Youth Services worker in an unrelated case, Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden’s office said.

Philip Chism, now 25, was tried as an adult and convicted by a jury in Salem Superior Court of first-degree murder with deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity and cruelty for the killing of Colleen Ritzer on Oct. 22, 2013. He was also found guilty of rape. Chism is imprisoned at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley.

While Chism was awaiting trial on the murder charge at a juvenile detention facility in Dorchester, he attacked and seriously injured a female counselor in a staff bathroom on June 2, 2014.

“True monsters exist out in the world. Philip Chism is a monster, a murderer,” the woman said in a victim impact statement released by Hayden’s office. “I have no doubt that his intention was to beat me into submission and eventually kill me.”

The woman described how the attack left her paralyzed with fear.

“I was unable to work for months, unable to leave my home for an extended amount of time, unable to use public restrooms without a supportive person being present for fear that he would be standing behind the door as I opened it each time,” she wrote. “I remember being unable to leave my bedroom for hours, in fear that he’d be waiting for me, ready to kill me.

“His face sometimes still haunts me, that lack of any emotion just ready to kill.” She said she continues to work through “this crippling fear” today.

“I have to be able to get up each day to tell him that I did survive, that what you did doesn’t control me, that you did not kill me, that you will not be my story,” she said.

Chism was charged as a youthful offender with attempted murder by strangulation, assault with intent to murder, kidnapping, and two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Not guilty pleas were entered on his behalf during his arraignment in June, 2014, the Globe reported.

On Friday in Boston Juvenile Court, Chism changed his plea to guilty to charges of attempted murder, assault with intent to murder, assault with a dangerous weapon (the cinder block wall), and kidnapping, Hayden’s office said. Judge Helen BrownBryant sentenced him to 17 to 20 years in state prison to run concurrent with his sentence for killing Ritzer.

“Even ten years later it’s easy to understand the terror and lasting impacts of this vicious attack, as made clear by this victim in her profoundly moving statement,” Hayden said. “But despite the physical and emotional injuries inflicted upon her that day, and their lingering consequences, this brave woman made clear that Philip Chism’s actions will not define her life or, in her own words, ‘be my story.’ In that she has our lasting respect and eternal support.”

In its planning and execution, the assault was frighteningly similar to the rape and slaying of Ritzer, 24, in a bathroom at Danvers High.

At the murder trial, prosecutors said Chism followed Ritzer after school into a girls bathroom where he raped and slashed her throat with a box cutter. He later put Ritzer’s body in a recycling bin and wheeled it into woods behind the school.

Police found the body early the next day covered in leaves.

Jurors rejected defense claims that Chism was in the throes of a psychotic breakdown and experiencing hallucinations when he killed Ritzer.