PARIS — A Connecticut transient charged in the fatal stabbing of a fellow carnival worker at the Fryeburg Fairgrounds in 2021 pleaded guilty Friday to manslaughter.

Carlos A. Negron, 48, was sentenced in Oxford County Superior Court to 15 years in prison, with six years and six months suspended, for killing Anderson Gomes, 31, of Waterbury, Connecticut.

Prosecutors dismissed a charge of intentional or knowing murder.

Negron has been held without bail since his arrest Oct. 13, 2021. He will be credited for time served in Oxford County Jail awaiting trial.

When he’s released from prison, Negron will be on probation for four years during which he will be barred from having alcohol, illegal drugs, firearms and dangerous weapons, for which he can be searched at random.

He’ll be required to engage in evaluation and treatment for substance abuse as directed by his probation officer.

Negron will be forbidden any contact with the Gomes’ family.

He must pay restitution of $5,500 to the Victim Assistance Fund.

Assistant Attorney General Lisa Bogue recounted Friday the details collected by investigators about events leading up to the stabbing and its aftermath.

Gomes had been working in Maine for about a month before he was killed, Bogue said. He had been living in a camper on the fairgrounds at 1154 Main St. with his girlfriend and another couple at the time of his death, Bogue said.

She said Negron and Gomes had walked to a store on the night of Oct. 12, 2023, where they bought alcohol and food.

After returning to the fairgrounds, they sat outside near Negron’s camper and drank with others until the early morning hours.

Gomes, who was intoxicated, said he wanted to go back to Connecticut. He went to the camper of a couple, who were his bosses, began yelling and arguing with them and asked them to give him a ride home, Bogue said.

He then engaged in a physical altercation with one of the men with whom he shared a camper and then ended up on the ground, with Gomes atop the man, Bogue said.

Another man pulled Gomes off of the man on the ground, “but the physical pushing, throwing and fighting continued,” Bogue said.

The man who intervened called 911 shortly after 1 a.m. to report that Gomes was drunk and fighting with others, Bogue said.

During the call, Gomes continued “pushing and shoving” and punched his girlfriend while throwing items, according to witness accounts, Bogue said.

Negron approached Gomes from behind and, according to some witnesses, began fighting with him.

Gomes’ girlfriend told police she could see Negron was carrying a knife with a 3- to 4-inch blade “and that she witnessed and heard the victim yelling that he was getting stabbed,” Bogue said.

His girlfriend came to his aid, then he collapsed and fell to the ground, Bogue said.

Negron left the scene with two other men.

Gomes’ girlfriend called police to report Gomes had been stabbed, Bogue said.

Negron walked to a camper housing two other men on the fairgrounds and sat inside briefly before returning to the scene of the stabbing. Police and medical personnel had arrived, Gomes was pronounced dead and Negron was arrested, Bogue said.

Another witness said she found a stiletto-style knife where Negron had been sitting after the stabbing and put it in a trash bin on the fairgrounds, Bogue said.

Investigators later recovered the knife and Maine Crime Lab testing revealed it contained Gomes’ DNA, Bogue said.

Crime Lab workers also tested the sleeve of a hoodie worn by Negron; it tested positive for Gomes’ blood.

When interviewed by police, Negron “varied between statements of accepting of responsibility for the stabbing to there being blurry moments where he couldn’t remember. He told officers that he did recall having a knife, so he ‘must have stabbed him.’ He also provided statements that he had been pushed and shoved by the defendant during the course of their altercation,” Bogue said.

A medical examiner determined after performing an autopsy on Gomes that the cause of his death was due to sharp-force injuries to the torso and left arm, Bogue said.

A Breathalyzer test showed Negron’s blood/alcohol level was .13 % several hours after his arrest, Bogue said.

The legal limit in Maine is 0.08%.

Gomes’ sister, Annabella Gomes, told Justice Thomas McKeon on Friday that her family came to this country from Cape Verde, a country off the west coast of Africa, to seek a better life.

When her mother was told of her son’s fatal injuries, she fell to the ground, emitting “terrific screams of agony I’ve ever heard,” Gomes said.

Her brother would be declared “dead before morning came,” she said.

Gomes said she was 25 years old when she delivered her brother’s eulogy, then dropped out of school for a semester and tried to end her life.

Anderson Gomes’ son was told of his father’s death when he thought his father had come to pick him up, Annabella Gomes said.

“The impact of his death doesn’t end with these aftershocks,” she said.

Memories of her brother’s absence will linger forever, she said.

“There’s always going to be the Fryeburg Fair, that place, that property that’s meant to bring joy and fun to the town will always have a patch of grass that stays brown in my mind,” she said.

Gomes and her family traveled to Fryeburg “to see the spot where he died,” she said.

“My mother and my aunts prayed over it and put out candles in his favorite color — red — and made rose petals over the same spot where he bled out. It’s always going to stick with me, that that one spot he spent pooling in blood and pain, maybe there will be trailers there next year. Maybe next year, the spot where my brother died, would be a merry-go-round or a port-a-potty or a horse stable and nobody’s going to realize it.”

But her family is always going to remember that on “beautiful fall days for a week of every year, people are going to eat and laugh and have lovely fun-filled days with their families as they dance on top of that stained grass,” she said.

Negron, by comparison, won’t feel the full effect of Anderson’s Gomes’ death, his sister said.

He might feel remorse, “or the burden of a guilty conscience,” she said, or “maybe a fear of God, if he considers himself a religious person.”

Negron was more than a decade older than her brother, she said.

“He should have been able to show restraint; he should have been able to have a measured reaction that didn’t result in death,” she said.

She said she hoped Negron will “follow a path to redemption” during his time behind bars.

In accepting the plea agreement, McKeon said: “No parents should have to bury a son as a result of a violent crime like this. And no bright young woman should have to give a eulogy for her brother at such a young age at 25. That stuff simply shouldn’t happen.”

McKeon continued: “I hope that this family can forget about the Fryeburg Fair and not have to think about it every fall and can only think about the good things that this young man brought to the family.”

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