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Judge rules Heltzel mentally ill, places him in state facility
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Judge Andrew Logan of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court ruled Thursday that Patrick Heltzel is a mentally ill person who needs to be kept in a state mental hospital for at least the next six months and possibly the rest of his life.
Judge Logan found Heltzel, 23, of Atlantic Street, not guilty by reason of insanity June 1 in the April 4, 2013, death of Milton Grumbling III, 71, of Kincaid East Road in Warren Township. Heltzel choked and stabbed Grumbling, then beat him with a television remote control.
Judge Logan relied on a recent report from Dr. Thomas Gazley of the Forensic Psychiatric Center of Northeast Ohio in Austintown for the determination that Heltzel should be hospitalized.
Heltzel, 23, will be re-evaluated in another six months and presumably kept in the hospital after that, and evaluated every two years after.
“The court has considered the dangerousness of the defendant to self and others, the need for security and the type of crime involved,” the judge said, reading from his court entry.
“Based on the evidence presented, the court finds that the least-restrictive commitment alternative available, consistent with public safety and the welfare of the defendant, is a commitment to Heartland Behavioral Healthcare.”
The judge added that Ohio law calls for Heltzel to be committed to a state facility for the remainder of his life “based on the maximum prison term [Heltzel] could have received for a conviction of aggravated murder, unless terminated earlier by an order of this court.”
Heltzel’s mother, Jan Dyer of Warren, said after the hearing she is “grateful [her son is] going to be getting the care he needs.”
When asked about his future, she said: “My hope is that at some point he will make something of his life and stand up for mental illness and help others.”
When asked what it’s like to be the mother of a child with mental illness, she said, “It’s always a fight, and a lot of doors are slammed in your face” when you are trying to get them treatment, she said, adding that one challenge is having a mentally ill family member who “doesn’t know they have it.”
Heltzel is the second defendant in the past six months to have been found not guilty by reason of insanity of a Trumbull County killing.
The other was Royce Honaker, 63, of Southington, who Judge Logan found not guilty by reason of insanity last November in the killing of his wife, Donna, at their home.
Over the past decade, few if any other people have been found not guilty by reason of insanity in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.
One was Crystal Good-rich, now 35, who stabbed her grandmother, 81, at her grandmother’s home in Newton Falls in 2009. The grandmother survived the attack.
Goodrich was released back into the community in 2012.
John Juhasz, Heltzel’s attorney, said Thursday the findings cited by Judge Logan on June 1, especially regarding the psychotic beliefs Heltzel had when he killed Grumbling, made it “pretty clear in this case” that Heltzel didn’t know the wrongness of his actions.
“We have this law [governing insanity] in Ohio for a reason,” he said.
Heltzel thought he was God and that he would be rescued of any wrongdoing because of his “divine status,” Judge Logan said in his June 1 ruling.