A man who killed and ate a man has been released back into public life after ten years.
Tyree Smith, from Bridgeport, Connecticut, killed a homeless man and then ate his brain and eyeballs according to officials.
The horrific case made headline news, with Smith found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity after a July 2013 trial.
In lieu of a stint behind bars, Smith was ordered committed to a state psychiatric hospital for 60 years.
But now, ten years after the grim incident, the state Psychiatric Security Review Board said Smith was ready to be transitioned back into the community.
Smith has been released from the facility, Connecticut’s most secure, as of writing.
He will be living in a Waterbury group home, and is not allowed to associate with anyone involved in criminal activity.
The board stated in its report: “Tyree Smith is an individual with a psychiatric illness requiring care, custody and treatment.
“Since his last hearing Tyree Smith has continued to demonstrate clinical stability.
“Mr. Smith is medication compliant, actively engaged in all recommended forms of treatment, and has been symptom-free for many years.”
During the trial, Smith’s cousin Nicole Rabb claimed he arrived at her Connecticut home in December 2011, talking about Greek gods and ruminating about needing to go out and get blood.
When she saw him the next evening she noticed what appeared to be specks of blood on his pants and that he was carrying chopsticks and a bloody ax.
Smith then allegedly told Rabb he killed a man and ate his brains in the Lakeview Cemetery while drinking sake, and grimly warned he intended to eat more people.
A month later, police found Angel Gonzalez's mutilated body in the vacant apartment on Brooks Street in Bridgeport where Smith had lived as a child.
Police later recovered the bloody ax and an empty bottle of sake in a stream bed near the Boston Avenue cemetery.
The defense's case rested on the testimony of Yale University psychiatrist Dr. Reena Kapoor, who testified that Smith had kept his lust for human flesh after his arrest, even offering to eat her.
Kapoor claimed Smith suffered from psychotic incidents since childhood and heard voices that told him to kill people.
She then said the voices ordered Smith to eat the victim's brain so they would get a better understanding of human behavior and the eyes so that they could see into the "spirit realm."
Kapoor added that Smith went to Subway after eating the man's body parts.
The report on Smith’s release said: “He denied experiencing cravings but stated that if they were to arise, he would reach out to his hospital and community supports and providers.”
It's not about pain, at least not for me. If he was in the most comfortable psych hospital in the world, where they fluffed his pillows and shined his shoes, if he ate better and slept better than I do, that would be fine. But releasing him?
I mean, he's going to a group home. He's likely going to be carefully managed for the rest of his life. This is more of a reduced level of monitoring.
I hope that's true, but I've known group homes that are... somewhat lax. The state of mental health care (and funding) in this country does not inspire hope regarding his monitoring.
I suppose we just have to hope that he's not lying about not having urges. As someone with mental illness, I've lied my socks off to avoid the psych ward before.
At least in my state, mental health group homes vary widely by supervision level. Some allow you to come and go like it’s a private home, others are under lock and key.
Let's fucking hope
Likely is the key word. Some group homes have strict supervision while others have effectively no supervision at all.
The problem is we don't care enough to have psych facilities like that. Which is why we have an entire wing of the emergency department at my hospital dedicated to holding people who are doing nothing but waiting for a bed at one of the trash facilities we actually do bother to provide. No real treatment in the emergency department except meds, but also not safe enough to send them home. Scary that there's somebody now who needs the bed in that facility more than this guy does.
I'll say I'm proud of this country the day we provide good, comfortable lifelong treatment facilities for people like this, alongside quality rest homes for our elderly. We have the resources to do it, and the fact that we don't is an absolute indictment of our society.
We did have psych facilities for a long time, but a lot of abuse was discovered, and our fix for it was to close all those facilities down and release everyone, who mostly just became homeless.
it's a complicated issue, and we need to get society on board with the idea of treating mental health (to both a sufficient and humane degree) in addition to physical health. moving away from the institutionalization model was intended to ensure people weren't just locked away to rot at the state hospital under the "supervision" of indifferent or hostile caretakers.
without community support and with the move toward profit-driven healthcare, people aren't going to get what they need. now our institutions are just literal prisons instead of asylums.
but anyway, i know you know most of this already (the shortcomings of the profit-driven model), as someone working in healthcare.