Staff report

MANCHESTER – Judge Will Delker sentenced Jaiden Ciruzzi, 20, of Goffstown, to serve 34 years to life in state prison Thursday for the reckless second-degree murder of Ian Jewell, 18.

Ciruzzi was 16 on Nov. 19, 2017, when he shot and killed Jewell, a Manchester high school student in a hardware store parking lot in Goffstown during the commission of a gunpoint robbery planned and executed by Ciruzzi, according to a news release issued by Attorney General John Formella.

At the time authorities said Ciruzzi lured Jewell to a phony drug deal planning to rob him.

Ciruzzi was subsequently arrested for Jewell’s murder, and on March 8, 2022, he pleaded guilty to reckless second-degree murder.

At Thursday’s sentencing hearing in Hillsborough County Superior Court, Judge Delker imposed a sentence of 34 years to life in the state prison, with the possibility of sentence reductions should Ciruzzi attain specified behavior and educational goals.

The case was prosecuted by Senior Assistant Attorney General Peter Hinckley and Assistant Attorney General Nicholas A. Chong Yen of the Criminal Justice Bureau, and was investigated by the Goffstown Police Department and the New Hampshire State Police Major Crime Unit.