Slay suspect passed on community service
Took probation in invasion case
Two months before a promising medical student was stabbed to death inside Winchester Public Library, a judge offered to let Deane Kenny Stryker’s alleged killer make amends for a frightening attempted home invasion by doing community service, according to court audio provided to the Herald.
Jeffrey Yibo Yao’s thenattorney Greg Johnson declined the proposal on his client’s behalf, opting instead to have the unemployed Yao’s parents pay a $50 per-month probation supervision fee through Dec. 21, 2018, according to an official audio recording of the Dec. 22 pretrial hearing in Woburn District Court to resolve his case.
“No, I believe that he would elect for the $50 per month,” Johnson told Judge Marianne Hinkle, though Yao was present in the courtroom.
Johnson did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Trial Court declined comment on Hinkle’s behalf.
Stryker, 22, a first-year medical student at the University of New England’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, will be laid to rest privately following a funeral service this afternoon at the Winchester Unitarian Society. The daughter of Michal Kenny of Winchester and the late Timothy Stryker is also survived by two sisters, Taomi and Teva Kenny, her obituary states.
Stryker, who authorities have said did not know Yao, was stabbed 20 times with a 10-inch knife when she was ambushed in a reading room of the library Saturday while on her laptop computer. Even as witnesses attempted to intervene, police said Yao only stopped the rampage and surrendered when Stryker collapsed on the floor with the knife in her neck.
Yao had also been arrested in Winchester Sept. 9 after a man on Richardson Street accused Yao of trying to break into his house in the middle of the night by slamming his body against a sliding glass door while the homeowner grabbed a golf club to protect his family, police said. “He is a total loose cannon,” police said the man told them.
Released from police custody on $40 bail that his mother posted, Yao pleaded not guilty in Woburn District Court on Nov. 1 to charges of attempted breaking and entering and disturbing the peace.
A prosecutor from the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office did not request higher bail or that Yao be held pending a dangerousness hearing, only that he stay away from and have no contact with the alleged victims.
Hinkle, on Johnson’s suggestion, ordered the 23-yearold Yao to stay at least 10 yards away from the Winchester neighbors who told police he terrorized them — a buffer zone of less than the length of a school bus.
Probation spokeswoman Coria Holland confirmed yesterday that Yao was in compliance at the time Stryker was murdered.
The parties went back before Hinkle on Dec. 22 seeking her approval for what Johnson described as “an agreed upon proposal for the court’s consideration” to resolve the case short of trial.
Prosecutors and Johnson consented to put Yao on pretrial probation for one year with the condition that he continue to seek help for his mental health issues at Harvard Vanguard in Burlington, where he was already in treatment, records show.
“The other condition is that you not commit any new criminal offense — another offense like this or any other kind of criminal offense,” Hinkle warned Yao. “If you stay in the treatment, pay the monies you’re required to pay, don’t commit any new criminal offenses, then I expect at the end of this year (of probation) this matter would be dismissed.”