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WTAE
June 7, 2015
A homeless man accused of stabbing a 16-year-old and holding her as a human shield while other customers tried to save her at the Target store in East Liberty was found guilty of several charges Thursday.
Leon Walls was found guilty but mentally ill on attempted criminal homicide, aggravated assault and recklessly endangering another person in his attack against Allison Meadows.
But, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity, for the first stabbing outside the Target of a man named Jobe Wright.
“Disappointing in some of the charges that didn’t stick involving the people who helped rescue Allison,” said her father, Glen.
Michael Turner is one of the men who assisted Meadows while trying to subdue Walls during the attack.
He expressed the same frustration, “I wasn’t happy with it because all charges were dropped against the guys who put their lives on the line and they dropped all charges against him.”
The 44-year-old Walls will be sentenced at a later date.
University of Pittsburgh Law Professor John Burkoff helped craft the “guilty but mentally ill” law decades ago, and said he had never seen a verdict split like this one.
“This is a really weird verdict,” Burkoff said. “Here’s what the jury was saying: in respect to some of these charges, he was insane. But with respect to some of the other charges, he was not insane. But he was mentally ill.”
The difference in terms is important: because he was found guilty, Walls will most likely serve prison time, but is also entitled to mental health treatment while incarcerated.
“I think (the jury) was trying to give us this message: we know this guy is mentally ill and for a lot of what he did, we don’t think he should be held responsible,” Burkoff said. “But we do think he should be held responsible for some of this, and the most serious part to us, to the jury, what they would probably say is it’s all the hostage stuff.”
Surveillance video which showed Walls holding Allison Meadows at knifepoint and stabbing her while witnesses tried to tackle and subdue the armed man was used as evidence during the trial.
“It was the most gut-wrenching thing I’ve ever had to watch,” Glen Meadows said “It has been an emotional roller coaster.”
