‘Bully’ gets jail for sucker punch

Barry Baker Jr. sentenced for assault of disabled man

In tears, Barry Robert Baker Jr. asked the a Chester County Court judge who was to sentence him for throwing a “sucker punch” at a disabled man outside a convenience store for leniency. It was not forthcoming. Baker was sentenced Wednesday to state prison for the assault and his subsequent flight from authorities who were searching for after warrants were issued for his arrest. The judge indicated that he found Baker not only to be a threat to the community, but to be a liar who showed contempt for the court through his dishonesty.

“I want this behind me,” Baker told Judge William P. Mahon at a 2½-hour sentencing proceeding at which an extended version of the now-infamous videotape of Baker’s roundhouse blow was aired.

The video shows Baker landing a haymaker to the face of an unsuspecting man who suffers from cerebral palsy and whose gait Baker mocked before assaulting him. “I want my life back. This will affect me for the rest of my life. I just want a chance to rebuild it.”

But Mahon, citing not only the nature of Baker’s crime but also the disrespect he had shown for the court by fleeing from apprehension following the outcry over the sucker punch and a propensity for being untruthful about the matter, gave him credit only for not making the prosecution prove the charges against him at trial, an exercise that would certainly have ended in a guilty verdict.

“I’ve been on the bench for 18 years, and I’ve never had someone misrepresent to me, and be caught doing it, as you,” Mahon told Baker, who had pleaded guilty in September to charges of simple assault and flight to avoid apprehension. “You have extreme difficulty with the truth.”

He cited instances when Baker had said he did not know he was being sought by police, whether he had been

in legal trouble in the past decade, and even whether the punch he threw was in response to an earlier altercation with someone he mistook the victim for.

“You are a bully,” Mahon continued. “You are a predator. You are a coward. In 18 years on the bench I have never had such tangible evidence of someone’s moral compass being so askew.”

Mahon sentenced Baker, 29, a Coatesville area resident who was living in Georgetown, Del., to twin terms of one to two years in a state prison on the charge, the statutory

maximum for each, as had been requested by the prosecutor in the case, Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Morgan.

In addition, he sentenced Baker to another term of one to two years for violating his probation from a 2009 case of theft from a motor vehicle, for a total sentence of three to six years behind bars.

The sentence far outweighed the sentence recommended in state guidelines for defendants in Baker’s shoes, of between three and 14 months incarceration for the assault and probation

to six months for the flight. Thomas Purl, Baker’s defense attorney, had asked Mahon to consider handing down a sentence that would keep his client in Chester County Prison, where he had been held since his arrest in June after a regional manhunt involving local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies.

The victim, 22-year-old Michael Patrick Ryan, who had not spoken publicly about the matter since it occurred and went viral in May, was seated in the courtroom with his mother, but did not address Mahon during the proceeding.

He declined comment when approached by a reporter and left the courtroom with Morgan and West Chester Officer Matthew Simcox, who had arrested Baker about six months ago.

In the assault case, Baker and others were outside a 7-Eleven convenience store located in the 200 block of South High Street around 2:30 a.m. on May 10 when a 22-year-old man later identified as Ryan, who has had cerebral palsy most of his life, drove into the parking lot and parked his vehicle in the lot near the front of the store.

Ryan got out of his vehicle and entered the store.

As seen on a video taken from the store’s surveillance system that was released by the prosecution after the incident, Baker started making fun of Ryan after he went inside, mocking him with an exaggerated stork-like walk. When Ryan came back out of the store, Baker again mocked him, this time so Ryan could see it. As Ryan turned to face Baker, in front of his vehicle, Baker spread his legs in a fighter’s stance and without warning, punched Ryan directly in the face.

Barry Baker