Dylan Schumaker is notorious for crying in court, and the YouTube video of him doing so quickly gained popularity. Here, the question of why he was in a courtroom arises. Teenager Schumaker, of Springville, was left with his girlfriend’s infant kid.
The incident occurred on March 19, 2013, while Schumaker was watching Austin and his sibling, who was three months old. When Schumaker killed the 23-month-old Austin, according to court documents Schumaker fatally beat the child when he would not stop crying, while his fiancée worked at a restaurant in Springville, the toddler’s death was head whipping violently and repeatedly punched. It leads to ruptured blood vessels causing internal brain bleeding. He was just 16 years old at the time of the incident.
Schumaker was then arrested and convicted of the murder along with child abuse charges. When he was to be sentenced, however, he allegedly told his mom that she should watch the performance he was going to put on in the courtroom. This teen killer was then sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison for the murder.
During Schumaker’s trial in court, the Springville teenager who fatally beat his girlfriend’s 23-month-old son told the judge that he did not intend to kill the toddler. He testified that when the toddler spits out the food, he slapped the toddler’s face and punched him. H
e added that while changing his diaper when the boy tried to get up, he slammed his head on the floor. Later, he placed a pillow over the boy’s head back and punched him repeatedly as he was fearful that Austin will wake up his baby brother.
After testifying the then-teenager cried and apologized to the victim’s mother, Juror that he did not mean to kill Austin. “I never wanted to hurt Austin. I never wanted Austin to die,” Schumaker said in a tearful apology to his 19-year-old girlfriend in a Buffalo courtroom.
“I can’t take back what was done. I wish I could. I’d give my life for Austin. I loved him a lot,” he said.
“Austin Smith was completely defenseless. That is a given. But there were other dynamics at work there, including my client’s inability to either control his anger or frustration and his inexperience in babysitting,” the killer’s attorney Joseph Terranova then spoke.
“Based on (Schumaker’s) short life now, what is to say he won’t do it again?” The judge then objected with his own remark.
“We don’t know that. I think it is completely unlikely. It was a situational, circumstantial thing,” Terranova responded.
However, State Supreme Court Justice M. William Boller reveals a horrible thing.
“The record will show that you admitted on July 23, 2013, in a phone call to your mother from a holding center you stated: “I am a sixteen-year-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry in front of the jury, and they’re going to feel sorry for me.”
The teenager was found guilty and was sentenced to a maximum punishment of a life sentence of 25 years. Boller who granted the American teenager a sentence of 25 years said that the hearing was heart-wrenching.
He was of the view that no matter if you are only 16 years of age you still know what is right or wrong. Boller added that Schumaker was well aware of the consequence while hitting the toddler.
Meanwhile, Reddit commenters expressed disbelief that he would say something like that on a recorded phone line, one wrote, “I’ve got so many transcripts from the county jail, and every time I can’t believe the gold mine of information I just got. The one that stands out to me was a 30-year-old gang member who saw a young teen wearing the wrong color shirt and jumped out of the car and stabbed him multiple times. He admitted it to another person on a phone call. I think he went away for 20 years.”
Another said, “I was on a grand jury when a few situations regarding recorded jail calls came up. Nothing this heinous; it was a robbery/beating though. The guy in jail was trying to be slick, telling his gf to ‘take out all the trash in his closet.’ The officer presenting to us said they went right to the dumpster at his place and found a single bag with the clothes he was wearing/blood stains/shoes, which was enough to indict in light of other evidence.”
Watch the video below for more details:
Sources: AWM, BuffaloNews, WGRZ