Kid Killed a 23 Month Old Baby Dylan Schumaker
Teenager sentenced to lengthy prison house term for killing girlfriend's 23-calendar month-quondam son
Austin Smith, 23 months, was murdered past his mother'due south boyfriend, Dylan Schumaker, sixteen.
Note to readers: This article periodically comes up in search results for people looking for information virtually Dylan Schumaker. No, he isn't a teen upset almost the problems acquired by his "white privilege." Nor was he sentenced to prison house for killing a Muslim refugee who raped his piffling sister. Below is why Schumaker was really in the news.
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A Springville teenager who fatally beat his girlfriend's 23-calendar month-onetime son told a judge Friday that he did not intend to kill the toddler.
"I never wanted to hurt Austin. I never wanted Austin to dice," Dylan Schumaker, 17, said in a bawling apology to his 19-twelvemonth-old girlfriend in a Buffalo courtroom.
Jurors who convicted Schumaker of 2nd-degree murder last calendar month didn't buy it.
Neither did State Supreme Court Justice M. William Boller. He sentenced Schumaker to 25 years to life in prison house, the maximum punishment.
"At sixteen you knew right from wrong," Boller told Schumaker, who turned 17 this week. "Yous knew it was wrong to keep punching his head."
Schumaker previously testified he put a pillow on the back of Austin's head and punched information technology to finish him from crying and waking his infant brother.
The March 19 attack occurred while he was infant-sitting Austin and Austin'due south 3-month-sometime blood brother.
Schumaker lived with his mother, along with Ashlee Smith and her two sons, in his mother's home on Cochran Avenue. He was xvi at the time of the attack. Neither of the children was his.
The judge called the trial testimony gut-wrenching. Witnesses described the assail and Austin's extensive head injuries that led to brain bleeding and the toddler's death.
The guess said the final minutes of Austin's life must have been terrifying. "He loved you, he trusted you, and yous betrayed him," Boller said.
The guess questioned Schumaker'south testimony at trial that he did not intend to kill Austin or realize his actions could impale the toddler.
Boller called Schumaker "a manipulator and deceiver."
The judge said he took annotation of a comment Schumaker made in a phone conversation with his mother concluding July while in the Erie County Holding Center awaiting trial.
"I'm a 16-year-sometime blond. Probably all I take to do is cry, and they're going to feel sorry for me," Schumaker told her, referring to the jury.
The approximate also cited the 200 texts Schumaker sent as he baby-sabbatum the two children while his girlfriend worked her dark job at a Springville restaurant.
In those texts, the judge noted, Schumaker tried to set a sexual tryst with a girl and sell drugs to his friends.
"But when the texting stopped, the chirapsia started," Boller said.
For a 17-year-old, Schumaker has acquired and so much pain and grief for so many people, the approximate said. He said he received letters from 13 people describing how Schumaker's crime impacted them.
"The night of March 19, my family'south life was decimated because this didn't accept to happen," Michael Smith, Austin's grandfather, told the gauge in courtroom, his voice breaking.
"He had numerous opportunities to get out" of the house and seek help, Smith said. "But he didn't."
Smith asked the judge to consider the family's feelings in sentencing Schumaker.
"Nosotros'll never go Austin back," he said, crying. "A slice of our heart will always be missing."
Joseph Terranova, Schumaker'southward attorney, agreed with Smith.
"This didn't take to happen," Terranova told the judge. "If the Smith family hadn't thrown Ashlee and her children out" of the business firm, "they wouldn't have ended upwardly at Dylan's habitation," with the children being baby-sat past a teenager who was unable to command his acrimony and ill-equipped to take care of them.
Doctors prescribed medicine for Schumaker to treat his anger and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, only he chose not to accept it, Schumaker said during the trial.
Terranova said the minimum sentence of 15 years to life would exist a more than reasonable punishment, given his client's tough childhood, his remorse over Austin's death and his inability to take intendance of children.
"What about the protection of the customs?" the approximate asked Terranova. "If he is released in 15 years, who's to say it won't happen again?"
The defense force attorney said no one can predict what will happen, merely he assured the approximate that his customer "is non a series killer who will get out and want to kill another child."
"To blame anyone other than Dylan for what happened flies in the face of reality," said homicide prosecutor Colleen Curtin Gable.
Although Schumaker was inexperienced as a baby sitter, what he did to Austin is not what a normal sixteen-year-sometime would have done, she said.
By taking in Ashlee Smith and her children into his mother's home, "I was trying to practice what my father didn't do – exist at that place," Schumaker told the judge.
He then turned to Ashlee Smith. "Ashlee, I'm sorry," he said, crying as she and others started crying. "I never wanted to hurt Austin. I never wanted Austin to die. I don't know why I didn't go for assist."
He told the estimate he did non have a good family life growing up, but he thanked his family members for attending the sentencing.
Every bit he was brought into court for sentencing, Schumaker cried out, "I didn't mean to hurt him. You know I loved Austin."
During his trial, Schumaker told the jury that he slapped Austin's face and spanked him when he spit out his nutrient and used an obscenity. He too admitted he slammed the boy's head on the floor while changing his diaper every bit the child tried to get upward and that he later put a pillow over the back of his head and punched it three times because he was afraid that the boy would wake up his baby blood brother.
He said it was only the 2d time he had taken care of both the boys.
Source: https://buffalonews.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/teenager-sentenced-to-lengthy-prison-term-for-killing-girlfriend-s-23-month-old-son/article_91a64596-b01b-51ed-a7f7-09a062e1131a.html
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