Burgettstown man gets maximum sentence for third-degree murder in 3-year-old boy's beating death
A Burgettstown man will serve 20 to 40 years in prison for killing his girlfriend’s 3-year-old son last year.
Tyler Scott Mason, 27, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder on June 21 for the beating death of Aiden Lombardi.
On Monday, he was sentenced by Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Kelly Bigley.
According to prosecutors, Aiden’s mother, Megan Meyers, left her son with Mason, whom she’d been dating for two months, around 5:45 p.m. on Feb. 2, 2021, at her home in Coraopolis. She was only gone 12 minutes to drive her friends and their children home to Emsworth.
Aiden had just woken up from a nap on the couch, she told police.
A short time later, Mason called her and said Aiden would not wake up and that his breathing was shallow.
Minutes after that, he called again “hysterical.”
Meyers then called 911.
When paramedics arrived, they found Aiden had bruising on his forehead, right eyelid and jawline, as well as “significant bruising to his left ear. He was unresponsive, in cardiac arrest with no pulse.”
He was taken to UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh where he died the next day.
Neighbors told police that they heard Aiden screaming inside the apartment.
In her victim impact statement, Meyers told the court that Mason’s beating of her son caused the boy to suffer five separate skull fractures.
After doctors told Meyers and her ex-husband that Aiden could not survive his injuries, they had to make the decision to sign a do-not-resuscitate order.
“I, a loving, caring mother, had to lay on a hospital bed with my toddler and whisper in his ear that he was going to see a bright light, and it was okay to go there, that he was going to be safe and loved there,” she wrote.
She called Mason “evil,” and said that both she and Aiden loved and trusted him.
In her statement, Meyers told the court that her son called her “Happy.”
Now, though, she wrote, “I am a defeated mother failed by the evil of the world.”
She described Aiden as healthy, bright, fun and sassy — a boy “who brought love and light to any room he entered.
“His hugs were beyond magical.”
Paula Reed Ward is a TribLive reporter covering federal and Allegheny County courts. She joined the Trib in 2020 after spending nearly 17 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team. She is the author of “Death by Cyanide.” She can be reached at pward@triblive.com.
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