A Farrell man, who admitted to stabbing his ex-girlfriend in her Hermitage apartment building, will spend at least two years in Mercer County Jail before being released to a long probation of treatment for his mental disorders.

Larry McMillan, 22, of 66 Capital Court, was sentenced Friday to two to four years in jail to be followed by the 10 years probation.

McMillan suffers from post traumatic stress disorder and major depression disorder, said Dr. Mark A. Goral, a forensic psychologist.

Since being in Mercer County Jail after the Nov. 29 stabbing, his symptoms have gone from severe to mild to moderate, the psychologist told Mercer County Common Pleas Court Judge Thomas R. Dobson. McMillan is on medications.

Hermitage police charged McMillan with attempted homicide and aggravated assault after the attack on his ex-girlfriend, Shirley Knight, 26, of 1420 Park Drive, Hermitage. Ms. Knight was treated at UPMC Horizon, Farrell, after the attack. McMillan pleaded guilty to aggravated assault.

Two incidents resulted in McMillan's disorders, Goral said. At age 15, two men threw McMillan into a Farrell street and shot at him, barely missing his head, the psychologist said. When McMillan was 18, he was driving a car on a Farrell street when someone in a passing car shot at him and his passenger with a 9-mm gun, Goral said.

Normally, county jail sentences are no more than one to two years. The long county jail sentence "punishes him for the crime, but does not worsen his condition by putting him in the state (prison) system," said Mercer County District Attorney James P. Epstein.

The county jail can keep him on medications and the long probation forces McMillan to "stay clean" or face a more severe prison sentence, Epstein said.