UPDATE! Trial Date Set for Eric McLean

Knoxville, TN (TLS). Eric McLean, the Knoxville man who shot his wife's teenage lover after the man intruded into the McLean home, will go on trial for the murder of Sean Powell on January 21, 2008.

McLean was released on bond in May.

29-year-old Erin McLean, wife of the accused, was a student teacher intern from the University of Tennessee, serving at West High School in Knoxville. It was there that she met Sean Powell, who had been one of her students.

In December of 2006 Powell dropped out of school and moved to Nashville to live with his formerly estranged mother. While living in Nashville Powell confessed to his mother of his affair with Erin McLean.

A series of text messages between Powell and Erin McLean show that Erin had begged the teenager to return to Knoxville.

Shortly thereafter, Powell traveled to the McLean home in Knoxville, where he had slept in his car for two nights prior to entering the home. The circumstances surrounding Powell's entrance into the McLean home are a bit murky.

Eric McLean placed a 9-1-1 phone call to report an intruder, yet he told the dispatcher that he knew who the intruder was. Later Erin McLean called 9-1-1 to report that her husband had shot Sean Powell outside the home in Powell's car.

Police apprehended Eric McLean some six hours later walking along a railroad track outside of Knoxville and carrying a shotgun. He had parked his car at the school where his wife had met Sean Powell.

Eric told police that he had known about the affair between his wife and Powell, and that even one of the McLean children had told him that their mother had been seen walking hand in hand with Sean Powell in a park.

Upon Eric's arrest and incarceration, Erin McLean moved with the children to Nashville to stay with relatives. Shortly thereafter she was taken to a local hospital for treatment for a suicide attempt.

Eric McLean has admitted to killing Sean Powell, but his attorney maintains it was a crime of passion, the result of Erin McLean's sordid affair with a teenage student--an affair conducted with the full knowledge of the McLean children.

Considered a minimal flight risk, Eric McLean will remain free pending the results of his trial in January of 2008.