Beaver County man gets 10-year prison term for severe abuse of disabled residents

A Beaver County man was sentenced to up to 10 years in prison Friday in Pittsburgh on federal hate crime charges stemming from severe abuse of disabled residents he was responsible for assisting at an in-patient health care facility in the county.

U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan imposed the sentence on Tyler Smith, 34, of New Brighton.

Smith previously pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy and violation of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Smith’s prison term will be followed by three years of supervised release.

Smith and co-defendant Zachary Dinell, formerly of Freedom, were charged with abusing at least 13 residents between June 2016 and September 2017 at McGuire Memorial, a residential medical facility in Beaver County’s Daugherty Township. Smith began working on the direct care staff there in May 2015, while Dinell started 13 months later.

The facility’s residents suffered from a range of severe physical, intellectual and emotional disabilities, according to court documents.

According to admissions made during Smith’s plea hearing, he and Dinell punched and kicked residents, rubbed hand sanitizer in their eyes, sprayed mouthwash in their eyes and mouths and, in one instance, removed a resident’s compression stocking in a way intended to inflict pain.

Court documents indicate several assaults were recorded on Dinell’s cellphone, including an incident where Smith admitted jumping on top of a 13-year-old boy who was lying on a bed with the lights turned off.

Smith admitted he and Dinell exchanged graphic text messages about the residents, which included sharing videos and photographs of the residents, describing the pair’s assaults on them and encouraging each other’s continued abuse of them.

Smith admitted the pair were able to avoid detection because of their one-on-one access to the residents and because the residents’ verbal and physical disabilities prevented them from defending themselves against the assaults or reporting them.

According to a federal indictment in the case, on March 7, 2017, Dinell wrote to Smith, “I‘m going to (expletive) murder (a particular resident). I choked the (expletive) out of him, and now he’s coughing and yelling.”

Smith responded, “(Expletive) kill him dude, he’s better off.”

Dinell previously was sentenced to 17 years’ imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, after he pleaded guilty to 12 federal counts against him.

“Hate crimes target and terrorize not just individuals but whole communities,” Attorney Eric G. Olshan said in a press release. “Our hope is that today’s result brings some measure of closure to the victims’ families who have shouldered the crushing burden of Smith’s and Dinell’s conduct for so many years.”