Actor Shelley Malil reacts to his sentence for stabbing his ex-girlfriend, Kendra Beebe.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW:The woman stabbed by actor Shelley Malil's says he lied and can't be trusted
- NEW: Kendra Beebe says she was "so frustrated" by the actor's testimony
- A California judge sentenced him Thursday to life in prison with a possibility of parole
- He was convicted of premeditated attempted murder for stabbing Beebe, his girlfriend
"In his testimony, he stated that it was the knife that did it, and he stated this repeatedly," Kendra Beebe told HLN's Jane Velez-Mitchell. "In fact it wasn't the knife that stabbed me 23 times. It was Shelley Malil."
One day earlier, San Diego, California, County Superior Court Judge Harry Elias sentenced Malil to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Five years ago, the actor was cracking up audiences as an electronics store clerk in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." But in August 2008, he was arrested in North County, California and charged with stabbing Beebe.
Earlier this fall, a California jury found him guilty of premeditated attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. He was found not guilty of burglary.
Malil received near the maximum sentence for his convictions. But his former girlfriend said that, while she was pleased with the jury's verdict, she still doesn't think the punishment was severe enough.
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Beebe survived the attack, despite having her chin severely cut, two collapsed lungs and losing about half the blood in her body, her attorney Gloria Allred told HLN on Friday.
In September, she testified that she'd initially thought that Malil was going to hug her when he approached her in her home, as her young children slept upstairs, that summer night. But instead, he began cutting her repeatedly with a knife -- a fact that Malil did not deny.
"I saw this flashing silver, and he goes bang, bang, bang," Beebe said in court.
The Indian-born actor -- who, according to the Internet Movie Database, has appeared in at least 54 movies and television projects, from Budweiser commercials, to guest appearances on "Scrubs" and "Reba," to his break-out performance as Steve Carell's co-worker Haziz in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" -- testified that he stabbed his girlfriend by mistake, thinking he was defending her.
On Thursday, he apologized in court.
"For what I did to Kendra, I don't even have the words to express my remorse or my feeling sorry. Kendra Beebe did not deserve anything that happened to her," Malil said.
Malil's 19-year-old niece, Anjali Varghese, testified at the sentencing hearing that her uncle's "crime was not a result of any kind of ingrained malice, because that's not his nature."
Yet Beebe said that the actor's testimony left her unconvinced, feeling "so frustrated and angry."
"It was horrible," she said. "He sure lied and lied and lied on the stand."
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