He bludgeoned his mother to death with rocks in South Hill. Now he’s been sentenced
A 28-year-old man who bludgeoned his mother to death with rocks in a South Hill apartment parking lot was sentenced Wednesday in Pierce County Superior Court.
Skyler Yeaman pleaded guilty earlier this month to second-degree murder for the July 30, 2020 killing of his 49-year-old mother, Sharmaene Yeaman. The defendant previously pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
The defendant was sentenced by Superior Judge Stanley Rumbaugh to 15 years in prison, the mid-range for defendants tried in similar cases. The maximum possible sentence was life.
Yeaman has no prior felony arrests or convictions, but he previously has been referred for involuntary commitment due to mental health issues and has admitted to ingesting drugs and hallucinating.
The defendant’s grandmother, Linda Kama, said in a victim-impact statement that Skyler Yeaman’s actions broke her heart. She described the tragedy as a “life sentence” for the family.
“Sharmaene was the best mother to Skyler, she did and gave him everything that she could,” Kama wrote.
Yeaman’s earlier insanity plea did not hold up after experts examined his mental status. According to a forensic psychological evaluation filed in October, a psychologist determined that although Yeaman had several mental health issues when he killed his mother, he still had the capacity to perceive the nature of what he did and was able to distinguish between right and wrong.
At the time of the homicide, Yeaman had a substance-induced psychotic disorder, traits of borderline personality disorder and a severe cannabis-use disorder, according to the report. The defendant told evaluators he first started smoking marijuana in 9th grade and reportedly smoked four to five one-gram joints daily in the months prior to the homicide.
The defendant was arrested the day of the killing by Pierce County Sheriff’s Department deputies who found him in the parking lot of Aspen Creek Apartments sitting about 20 yards away from the victim, who was lying on the ground next to three large rocks.
According to court records, Yeaman lived with his mother and her fiance at the apartment complex at 1274 104th Ave. Ct. E. He was born and raised by his mother in Hilo, Hawaii until age 25 when they moved to Puyallup to be near his mother’s fiance.
The fiance told detectives he was sleeping in the apartment when Yeaman burst in, yelling that he’d killed his mother.
What led to South Hill mother’s killing
When investigators asked Yeaman what happened, the defendant said “he had just smoked some weed, and said that his mother suffered from some medical issues, and he decided to kill her so she would be in a better place,” records say.
More than a year later, when Yeaman was interviewed by psychological evaluators, his vague reasoning for killing his mother was not more clear. According to the report, his mother was diagnosed in 2005 with Moyamoya disease, a disorder of blood vessels in the brain. But Yeaman told evaluators that his mother’s health was “good” prior to her death.
In his own account of what happened, Yeaman told evaluators he was anxious that morning and had heard people in the apartment complex yelling. He left the apartment several times and said he had trouble calming down. According to the report, he felt violent while pacing outside and wanted to break something. Yeaman said his mother tried to calm him, but he continued to feel violent and tense, telling his mother “stay back or I’ll kill you.”
The defendant said his mother began to chase him, and he hit her with a rock. He told evaluators that his mother yelled at him to stop, but he continued to hit her. Yeaman said he then became angry with himself and damaged several vehicles in the parking lot, describing himself as “blacked out with anger.”
Evaluators said Yeaman gave various inconsistent explanations for why he killed his mother. They asked him to clarify.
“He tearfully replied, ‘I don’t know, I guess I was gonna throw a rock at somebody and it happened to be mom,’” the report states. “‘I thought it was the right choice because I’d be saving her, but killing anyone else was wrong.’ When asked to elaborate, he explained ‘Because I knew her … if I did it to somebody else it would have been bad.”
