A man who beat a fellow panhandler to death in his homeless encampment was convicted Friday of second-degree murder.
Tony Hyde, 53, previously of Missouri, was not convicted of the more serious charge of first-degree murder, which would have sent him to prison for the rest of his life. Instead the jury convicted on the lesser charge, carrying up to 50 years, for the 2021 death of Timothy Thacker.
Thacker died in the hospital several days after the severe beating left him with multiple broken facial bones and other injuries.
Hyde and his attorneys did not deny he was the one behind the assault, part of which was witnessed by a responding sheriff’s deputy in the 4900 block of Hubbell Avenue. But they suggested he was too intoxicated to form the “specific intent to kill” required by law. From the stand, Hyde said Thacker struck the first blows, and Hyde feared Thacker might attack him with a knife, as he had threatened to do to another homeless person they knew.
“My reflex is to hit him back. I got hit, so I went to hit him back, and then I got to feel like, ‘I’ve got to stop him or he’s going to stab me,'” Hyde testified.
Much of Hyde’s week-long trial involved his history of severe alcoholism, including prior police contacts where he was found to have a blood alcohol content of .45 — nearly six times the legal limit. Dr. John Fell, a defense expert, testified that even after he sobered up in custody, Hyde showed signs of lasting cognitive damage from his addiction.
“I feel like he probably was not capable of making any sort of high-level correct or complex decisions (at the time of the assault),” Fell said. “He didn’t have the judgment, he didn’t have the ability to put things together and think things through like most of us would in most situations.”
Prosecutors countered that Hyde’s actions afterward, including approaching a passing driver to summon an ambulance, showed he was capable of rational thought, and that Hyde had intentionally and repeatedly beat Thacker despite having several times knocked him unconscious.
Thacker, 62, also struggled with alcohol, and spent time living either on the streets or staying with his siblings in the area, his sister Judy Shuput testified. She called him “a really good guy” and her best friend who stood by her throughout her battle with cancer.
Shuput said she had spoken with him the day before he was attacked, offering to do his laundry, and she saw him after he was rushed to a hospital for treatment.
“You could hardly tell it was him,” she said. “His face was all swelled up. He couldn’t talk. I think he was in a medically induced coma. He had the tube down his throat and everything.”
The Polk County jury deliberated less than a day before returning its verdict. No sentencing date has been set.