Jury being selected in Slender Man stabbing case

WAUKESHA, Wis. – Jurors are being selected in a southeastern Wisconsin courtroom to decide the mental competency of a girl accused of stabbing a classmate in 2014 to please a fictional horror character known as Slender Man.

Fifteen-year-old Anissa Weier has pleaded not guilty due to mental illness in a stabbing that nearly took the life of classmate Payton Leutner at a park in Waukesha when the girls were 12. A second classmate, Morgan Geyser, will go on trial later.

A plea deal Weier has reached with prosecutors calls for 10 years in prison if she’s found not to have been mentally ill. A judge could sentence her to as many as 25 years. If she’s found to have been mentally ill, she would be committed to a mental hospital for at least three years.