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Man held for trial in attack on trio in Brookline

Jason Cato
By Jason Cato
3 Min Read March 24, 2009 | 17 years Ago
| Tuesday, March 24, 2009 12:00 p.m.

The girlfriend of a man accused of beating three people after an all-night party in Brookline testified Monday that she awoke to see her boyfriend’s sleeves soaked with blood.

“He said he had to get out of town, and he ran out,” Angel Cyphers said.

Her boyfriend, Ryan Patrick O’Connell, 26, is charged with beating the victims Feb. 18 in a third-floor bedroom of the Brookline Boulevard house he shared with Cyphers and her two children. He was held for trial on three counts each of attempted homicide and aggravated assault after a preliminary hearing in Pittsburgh Municipal Court.

Cyphers testified she assumed O’Connell had been in a street fight when she spoke with him briefly at about 8 a.m. Two hours later, Cypher’s 6-year-old son woke her.

“He told me he heard funny noises upstairs,” Cyphers said. That’s when she said she discovered the victims.

“There was blood everywhere,” she said.

Cyphers said she panicked, tried to call 911 using a victim’s cell phone and rushed her son to school before returning home.

Paramedic Lawrence Kardasz testified he arrived to find Kelly McGinnis, 20, of Baldwin Borough sitting in a car, bleeding from her head and both ears.

“She was confused about where she was or how she had gotten into that condition,” Kardasz said.

He found the other victims — Ryan Hatfield and Angela Sapienza, both 20 — upstairs on a mattress. He thought Hatfield was dead until he checked for a pulse.

“He reached up and grabbed my wrist,” Kardasz said.

Police previously said they found a dumbbell, hammer and large piece of wood in the bedroom but wouldn’t say if they were used to beat the victims.

O’Connell showed up at police headquarters with his lawyer the day of the beatings. He was wearing blood-stained clothes, Detective Brian Weismantle testified.

O’Connell told police the group partied until sometime after 4:30 a.m. and took several shots of rum in an effort to fall asleep. When that failed, Weismantle said, O’Connell went into the bedroom and saw Hatfield.

Weismantle said O’Connell told them he remembers slamming Hatfield to the ground before blacking out. When he came to, his hands were covered in blood, Weismantle said.

O’Connell did not speak the hearing before District Judge Richard King, who agreed to reduce bond from $1 million to $100,000.

Defense lawyer Charles Hoebler said someone else could be responsible.

“There are still a lot of unanswered questions in this case,” Hoebler said. “There were no witnesses who said Ryan O’Connell committed this crime, and we would submit he didn’t.”

On questioning from Hoebler, Weismantle acknowledged that O’Connell told police he didn’t know if he was the attacker.

“He said he thinks he threw a male to the floor, then he doesn’t know what happened,” Weismantle testified.

No other suspects are being investigated, Weismantle said.

Hoebler said the lock to the house was broken and there had been several break-ins within the past year.

“Anybody could have come into the house,” he said.

Assistant District Attorney Kevin Chernosky disagreed.

“The person in custody is the most likely person responsible for the crime,” he said.


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