BOSTON -- A jury has found Harvard graduate student Alexander Pring-Wilson guilty of voluntary manslaughter in the 2003 stabbing death of Michael Colono, rejecting the student's claim of self-defense.

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After considering statements on behalf of the victim and Pring-Wilson Thursday, Middlesex Superior Court Judge Regina Quinlan sentenced him to six to eight years in prison to be served at Cedar Junction in Walpole, Mass.

Pring-Wilson was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the stabbing death of 18-year-old Colono outside a Cambridge pizza shop. Pring-Wilson claimed he was defending himself.

The jury also considered a first-degree murder charge during five days of deliberations.

Colono's mother, Ada, cried inconsolably after the verdict, disappointed that her son's killer did not receive a first-degree murder conviction.

"Michael's death has been a very big loss, and I will never understand why he had to go," said Colono's sister, Demaris, before Pring-Wilson's sentencing. "I wish this was a bad dream that I could wake up from."

After a night of drinking and bar hopping, according to testimony during the 3 1/2 week trial, Pring-Wilson walked past Ring Pizza in Cambridge on his way home to Somerville, Mass. As he walked past a car with Colono inside, words were exchanged and a fight ensued.

"I went from happy, loved and taken care of to a single mother with no explanation to give our daughter," said Cindy Goodsman, Colono's longtime girlfriend and mother of his daughter. "The day they took Michael, they took a piece of me."

Goodsman then read a note from the couple's 4-year-old daughter, Jade.

"I love you Daddy," Goodsman read. "I miss you Daddy, and I wish you were here."

"Alexander Pring-Wilson has lived in anguish over the fact that another human life was taken over what he did," said defense attorney Ann Kaufman.

Kaufman asked the judge to give her client probation.

Cynthia Pring said before April 12, 2003, her son had never been in trouble, and always wanted to help make other people's lives better.

"He has been a role model for everyone who has ever met him," she said. "He never would have wanted to hurt anyone."

Pring said her son has mourned the death of Colono, and should not go to jail.

"He is everything I have ever wanted in a son," she said.

Colono died from five stab wounds -- one of them to the heart. Pring-Wilson maintained that he took out his knife in self-defense.