By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — A man who admitted to violently beating and suffocating a student before stealing her iPhone behind a dumpster near a Chelsea nightclub received 14 years in prison at his sentencing Thursday.
Police were able to quickly trace the assailant, Jonathan Salva, because he dropped his own cell phone while fleeing the scene in February 2009, his lawyer said.
Salva, 21, admitted he followed the 26-year-old victim out of the M2 Ultra Lounge, formerly known as the Mansion night club, and choked and brutally attacked her. Be he denied ever raping her — a claim she reported to prosecutors.
He faced a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted at trial of predatory sexual assault. He pleaded guilty only to the non-sexual charges in the indictment and received the 14 years.
Salva will not have to register as a sex offender when he is eventually released from prison, his lawyer Bryan Konoski said.
