Brighton Heights man with schizophrenia gets prison term for killing neighbor

In November 2019, Laron Smith was forbidden by airline officials from taking his connecting flight from Chicago to Arizona because of his erratic behavior.

Airline employees called Smith’s father in Arizona, as well as his mother in Pittsburgh, and said he’d been acting strangely.

Smith, now 26, believed then that he was being kidnapped and taken to China.

The airline wouldn’t let him fly, and Smith eventually returned to Pittsburgh, his father Gregory Smith testified on Thursday.

Over the next several months, Smith began to isolate from his family and he stopped caring for himself. His mother found water bottles filled with urine in the fireplace.

“We could tell something wasn’t right,” said Smith’s mother, Lonna Johnson.

She made an appointment for him to receive mental health treatment, but it was too late.

The day before the appointment, Smith shot and killed his neighbor in Brighton Heights.

The afternoon of Nov. 9, 2020, — the same afternoon a witness said they saw Smith screaming profanities to himself outside — Smith put on a tan ski mask, armed himself with a gun and followed his neighbor and the man’s girlfriend as they went to get pizza.

Smith shot Ernest Mills Jr. three times near the intersection of Brighton Road and Davis Avenue, killing him.

Smith fled and was arrested two days later.

He pleaded guilty but mentally ill to third-degree murder on Sept. 26 before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Anthony M. Mariani.

On Thursday, the judge ordered Smith to serve 16-1/2 to 43 years in prison.

Defense attorney Carmen Robinson asked the court for a lesser sentence, arguing that Smith has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was not under any form of treatment at the time of the crime.

Deborah Mucha, who has a doctoral degree in counseling psychology, works as a mitigation specialist.

She evaluated Smith and spent extensive time investigating his background and talking to his family. Witnesses told police that in the days leading up to the shooting, Smith was spotted outside acting strangely. He set a magazine on fire in a neighbor’s yard, threw sneakers onto active power lines and screamed profanities.

Smith, who spent nine months at Torrance State Hospital, is now on medication that is helping him manage his symptoms, Mucha said.

Schizophrenia can be controlled, she continued, but it requires a strong support system.

When a person is untreated, a person with paranoid schizophrenia can be in constant fear, Mucha said.

“You’re terrified,” she said. “You can’t trust anybody.”

Smith has family members on both his mother’s and father’s side who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, Mucha testified, but said it wasn’t often discussed because they thought it made them appear weak.

“The issue with my family is, we never had a conversation about mental health,” said Smith’s uncle, Clarence Troutman.

Prior to the shooting, Smith had removed smoke detectors in his home because he believed they had cameras in them. He also thought a woman he saw on television had a crush on him.

Robinson told the court that her client was paranoid, but that he also lived in a dangerous neighborhood. That combination, she said, made him believe the actions he took were reasonable.

Mariani wasn’t convinced.

“The person your client shot was running away. So what danger did this person present to your client?” the judge asked.

“We don’t know what his paranoia was,” Robinson answered.

She asked the judge to consider her client’s schizophrenia in fashioning his sentence, suggesting a minimum prison term of 8-1/2 years.

“Having control of your paranoia and delusions when you don’t know you’re ill is impossible,” Robinson said.

Mills’ older sister, Da’Lynn Mills, asked Mariani to sentence Smith to the maximum possible.

She told the court that she and her brother loved watching “A Christmas Story” together and she missed talking to him.

She also said that her brother very much wanted to have children but never had the chance.

Assistant District Attorney Emma Schoedel called Mills “collateral damage to the defendant’s lack of acknowledgment of his mental illness.

“Ernest Mills was not a threat to him,” Schoedel said. “He was just walking down the street, going to get pizza with his girlfriend.”

Without Smith’s mental illness, Schoedel said, the state would have pursued a conviction for first-degree murder. The guilty but mentally ill plea requires that a defendant sentenced to prison be placed in a facility that can meet their mental health needs.

“Justice demands retribution for the loss of Ernest Mills,” Schoedel said.