Former patient at Meadows Psychiatric Center sent to state prison for assaulting workers
A former patient who assaulted two workers at The Meadows Psychiatric Center was sentenced Tuesday to at least 2 1/2 years in state prison.
Thomas Birkl, 28, of Blair County, was sentenced by Centre County Judge Brian Marshall to a maximum of five years in state prison. He received credit for 10 months served in the Centre County Correctional Facility.
Birkl told Marshall he went to the inpatient psychiatric hospital for help and did not plan to injure the women.
“I know what I did was wrong,” Birkl said before his sentence was handed down. “... I do feel bad for what I did.”
Birkl was “acting out and throwing food around the facility” in April, state police at Rockview wrote in an affidavit of probable cause.
One psychiatric aide began to clean when Birkl struck her in the face and knocked her to the ground. He struck her two more times in the head. When another worker tried to intervene, Birkl also hit her in the back and head, police wrote.
Both were transported to Mount Nittany Medical Center.
One woman was pregnant and was treated for head injuries, Centre County First Assistant District Attorney Sean McGraw said. The other was treated for a head injury and complained of numbness in her left arm.
The latter told Marshall she was diagnosed with a concussion and could not work for two weeks. She said she is “constantly on high alert.”
“I don’t think it’s fair to go into work and get hurt,” she said.
Birkl pleaded guilty in November to two felony counts of aggravated assault; four charges were dropped. That added to Birkl’s lengthy list of convictions, including three prior aggravated assaults.
The attacks, McGraw said, were not spur of the moment. He said Birkl has a “deeply rooted proclivity for violence” toward health care workers.
Birkl “ultimately never had a chance,” Centre County First Assistant Public Defender Lora Rupert wrote in a memo to Marshall. She added that Birkl has been a “product of the system.”
He was placed under the care of Blair County Children and Youth Services when he was 3 years old. He was hospitalized at The Meadows when he was 5 years old.
He was placed in group homes, treatment centers, juvenile justice facilities and was previously incarcerated in state prison. Rupert pushed for Birkl to be sentenced to a shorter time period in the county jail, where she said he has done “extremely well.”
She said more than once that we was proud of him.
“Ultimately I’m not completely flummoxed by the sentencing but it’s my sincere hope the mental health needs of my client can be adequately addressed in that environment,” Rupert wrote in a text message to the Centre Daily Times after the hearing. “As defense counsel, we try to be the voice for our clients and inform the court of all mitigating circumstances and if we can achieve that then we’ve accomplished what we’ve set out to do.”