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Tynisha Hall, of Bridgeport, pleaded guilty to killing her elderly uncle. Bridgeport Police Department / Contributed photo |
BRIDGEPORT — A licensed caregiver, accused of beating her disabled uncle to death and then propping him up with a lit cigarette in his hand to cover up the crime, agreed to plead guilty Wednesday to reduced charges.
Tynisha Hall, who had been charged with murder in the 2017 crime, pleaded guilty under the Alford Doctrine before Superior Court Judge Kevin Russo to first-degree manslaughter, first-degree abuse of an elderly person and three counts of risk of injury to a child.
State’s Attorney Joseph Corradino told the judge that under the plea bargain he is recommending Hall be sentenced to 15 years in prison, followed by a period of probation.
The judge set the sentencing hearing for Dec. 15.
Under an Alford Doctrine plea, the defendant did not admit to all the facts of the case but conceded there is a likelihood she could be found guilty if she went to trial.
The judge then made a finding that she is guilty of the crime.
Hall’s lawyer, Assistant Public Defender James Pastore, declined comment as he left the courtroom. His client had no comment as she was led away in handcuffs by judicial marshals.
A mother of three children and a licensed nursing assistant, Hall was married to a computer programmer. The couple previously owned a home in Windsor and rented a home on Dover Street in Bridgeport, where police said the crime occurred in early February 2017.
Shortly before 3:30 on the afternoon of Feb. 8, police said, medics were dispatched to the Dover Street property for a report of a man having a heart attack. When the medics got there, police said, they found 61-year-old Robert Jones, of Hedgehog Circle in Trumbull, sitting up in a chair with burns on his hand and in his lap from a cigarette. Police said it was obvious Jones had been dead for some time — his body was in rigor mortis.
Police said Jones had one large and one small laceration in the back of his head which the medical examiner said would have led to a large amount of bleeding, but no obvious blood had been found in the Dover Street home.
Police said Hall told them she had brought her uncle to the Dover Street house to care for him.
Police Detective Kimberly Biehn then went back to the Dover Street home and this time sprayed the bathroom with BlueStar, a reagent used to find blood stains that may have been washed off and were no longer visible to the naked eye.
The spray immediately lit up the bathroom walls in a blue luminescence
and there was a blood-splatter pattern that stretched from the ceiling
to the floor, police said.
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