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Prison doctor warned that Howland felon would ‘kill again’
trumbull county
By Ed Runyan
HOWLAND
When Shawn Jarrett left prison in 2012 and moved to Howland Township after serving his entire 30-year sentence for a 1982 Farrell, Pa., murder and 1982 Sharon, Pa., assault, Howland Police Chief Paul Monroe warned the public that Jarrett had “violent, homicidal tendencies” and said people should be on alert.
But a remark from a Pennsylvania state prison doctor in 2012, just before Jarrett was released from prison, went a step further.
“He will kill again. It’s just a matter of time,” the doctor wrote of Jarrett, according to news media accounts published in Michigan.
That information was cited by police in court documents in Walker, Mich., several months ago while police were asking a judge for a search warrant to help them further investigate whether Jarrett, 50, committed a murder in Walker in July.
Jarrett already is being held in the Kent County, Mich., jail without eligibility to make bond on charges of raping and robbing an elderly woman in nearby Grandville, Mich. in June.
Monroe didn’t mention the “He will kill again” remark in his public comments at the time Jarrett moved to Howland to live with his parents on Dawson Drive near the Eastwood Mall.
The department educated all of its officers about Jarrett, and Monroe had “every officer on every shift drive up and down” Dawson Drive, the chief said. The goal was for residents and Jarrett to see that the department was watching the area closely.
Monroe said the statement of a doctor as to what a convict might do when he is released from prison is an opinion, and it might be a violation of medical privacy laws if Monroe were to have repeated the doctor’s opinion to a newspaper reporter, he said.
Monroe said he doesn’t know how long Jarrett remained at his parents’ house, but he learned sometime later that Jarrett had gone to California after leaving Trumbull County.
Monroe said he wishes western Michigan authorities had been given the same information about Jarrett’s history Howland officials got, but “we had no idea where he had gone.”
Jarrett is a suspect in the death of Berta Y. Reyes, 42, who worked in the same Walker, Mich., greenhouse where Jarrett worked in April, when Reyes went missing.
The investigation into Reyes’ death was recently turned over to prosecutors in Kent County, Mich.