The 29-year-old man charged with fatally stabbing Corina Zukowski in an East Lyme motel on Dec. 11, 2018, is considering an offer from the state to resolve his case with a guilty plea rather than go on trial.

Avery Hallbrooks received the undisclosed plea offer from prosecutor Sarah W. Bowman when he appeared Tuesday in New London Superior Court. He will be discussing it with his attorney, John E. "Jack" Franckling, and will return to court on Dec. 3. Eventually, he will notify the court whether he is accepting or rejecting the offer.

Hallbrooks, 29, is charged with murder and is being held in lieu of $2,025,000 at the Cheshire Correctional Institution.

The victim's parents and other family members were in the courtroom for his brief appearance before Judge Hillary B. Strackbein.

Zukowski, a 25-year-old mother of three from Waterford, was pregnant at the time of her death and was staying at the Starlight Inn in Niantic, according to court documents and interviews.

On the night she was killed, she had texted a co-worker from the Flanders McDonald's that she and Hallbrooks were fighting and that she had thrown his belongings out of the motel room. Zukowski told the co-worker that if Hallbrooks came back to the motel, she would be ready for him with a butcher knife that she was keeping on her bedside table.

Hallbrooks called 911 at 10:30 p.m. to say that Zukowski wasn't answering the door and that a man in a green hoodie had run out of the room and attempted to stab him.

Police went into the room and found Zukowski lying on the floor near the door, covered in bedding, with stab wounds to the neck, hands and chest and a pool of blood nearby.

She was taken to Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 11:16 p.m.

Hallbrooks later confessed to stabbing Zukowski after they fought about his drug and alcohol use, according to East Lyme police.

k.florin@theday.com