SNOW HILL — It took about 90 minutes for a Worcester County Circuit Court jury on Tuesday to return a guilty manslaughter verdict for a Sparrows Point man who threw a fatal punch that claimed the life of another Baltimore County man in Ocean City in May.
Ryan M. Shupert
After a day-and-a-half trial, the Worcester County Circuit Court jury on Tuesday found Darren Beattie, 22, of Sparrows Point, Md., guilty of manslaughter for his role in the death of Ryan M. Shupert, 31, of Lutherville, Md., on May 29 in Ocean City. In another case of a fight gone terribly wrong, which has become all too familiar in Ocean City in recent years, Beattie and Shupert along with groups of their friends were first involved in a verbal altercation that turned into a deadly physical altercation, and Beattie threw the single punch to Shupert’s head that caused him to fall hard to the ground and ultimately claimed his life.
On Tuesday, the jury deliberated for about an hour-and-a-half before returning a guilty verdict on the manslaughter charge and the lesser charges against him and a pre-sentence investigation was ordered. Beattie now faces up to 10 years in prison for the manslaughter conviction. He is being held in custody pending the outcome of a pre-sentence investigation and sentencing has not yet been scheduled.
Around 2:30 a.m. on May 29, Ocean City Police and Ocean City EMS responded to the area of 136th Street and Coastal Highway for a reported assault. Ocean City EMS transported Shupert to Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury where he was admitted in serious condition with life-threatening injuries. Two days later, Shupert succumbed to injuries sustained from the one fatal punch from Beattie during the street confrontation and the assault investigation turned into a homicide investigation.
In the opening statement for the prosecution on Monday, Assistant State’s Attorney Joaquin Cabrera outlined the events that led to the fatal confrontation on Coastal Highway at 136th Street. Cabrera characterized the incident as a series of verbal altercations that began on a municipal bus and culminated with the single punch from Beattie to Shupert’s head.
“It was basically one senseless act,” he said. “A single punch to the head ended Mr. Shupert’s life. It was a sucker punch, a haymaker to the base of the victim’s head and he fell and hit the sidewalk. It was the defendant’s sole action that killed Ryan Shupert. It was one senseless act, one punch to the back of the victim’s head.”
Shupert’s friends Greg Lehrl and Dan Fouts arrived early for the Memorial Day weekend in Ocean City and Shupert joined them two days later on Saturday, May 28. The three friends spent much of the afternoon at a bar before taking an Uber to Shupert’s aunt’s house in Montego Bay where they were staying. After taking showers and getting ready for a night of more festivities, the trio went back down into midtown searching for a bar that didn’t have a long line on the busy holiday Saturday night and ultimately ended up at the Skye Bar.
According to witness testimony, Shupert and his friends attempted to take an Uber home to Montego Bay from 66th Street, but the surge rates were exorbitant. They opted to take a municipal bus north. On the crowded bus, the trio encountered and interacted with other bus patrons, but it wasn’t until they had been on the bus for a while and it was nearly empty that they encountered Beattie and his four friends, all in their 20s.
According to testimony, the verbal altercation began with Shupert’s group correcting Beattie’s group on an apparent grammar violation. According to testimony, one of Beattie’s friends asked the bus driver, “what stop this is?” prompting Shupert and his friends to correct them, telling them not to end a sentence in a preposition and to speak proper English, according to witness testimony.
That interaction spurred a verbal argument on the bus with no shortage of expletives launched between the two groups. According to Lehrl, Beattie and his group got off the bus at 130th Street and as the verbal altercation escalated, Beattie and his group challenged Shupert and his three friends to get off the bus and fight.
“Mr. Beattie and his group got off the bus and asked us to get off and fight,” said Lehrl during testimony on Monday. “They said ‘get off this bus and we’ll fight right here.’ We stayed on the bus to avoid confrontation and took the bus all the way to 142nd Street just to avoid running into them again. There was never any thought of re-engaging them again and we stayed on the bus because there was no reason to fight.”
According to testimony, Shupert and his friends wanted no part of a potential fight and continued on the bus until it reached 142nd Street, or near the end of its northerly route, even though it went well past their planned stop. Shupert and his friends then walked back southbound toward Montego Bay when the encountered Beattie and his group again around 136th Street.
According to Fouts’ testimony, he and Shupert and Lehrl saw Beattie and his group walking toward them on the northbound sidewalk and stepped into Coastal Highway to give them a wide berth in an attempt to avoid a confrontation. When the verbal argument ensued again, Beattie lunged at Shupert and struck him in the base of the back of his head, causing him to fall into the roadway. Lehrl and Fouts briefly gave chase to Beattie and his group, but quickly realized Shupert was seriously injured.
“I heard the crack of the punch to the head and Ryan hit the ground,” said Fouts during testimony on Monday. “It was like a dead weight falling. He hit him so hard he came right out of his shoes when he was struck.”
During his opening statement on Monday, defense attorney James Gitomer attempted to characterize Shupert and his friends as the aggressors in the confrontation. Gitomer pointed to the trio’s alleged day of drinking, pointing out they had been to multiple establishments throughout the 12 hours or so leading up to the fatal confrontation and had consumed double-digit alcoholic beverages.
“Here you have three 30-year-olds- adults- acting like they were six and four 20-somethings trying to get away from them,” he said. “Mr. Beattie hit him one time for fear of his own bodily harm and, unfortunately, Mr. Shupert died.”
Contrary to Gitomer’s portrait of the events leading up to the incident, Lehrl and Fouts both testified they had consumed multiple drinks over a long period of time throughout the day and night, but were not overly intoxicated and remembered every aspect of the events with clarity.
During his opening statement, defense attorney Gitomer used an analogy to illustrate sometimes things don’t appear as they seem. Gitomer described putting a cat and a mouse inside a box. When one left the box alone and came back later, the cat was there and the mouse was gone and the obvious assumption is the cat ate the mouse. However, Gitomer said there could be a hole in the box and the mouse could have simply gotten away.
“This was a case of self-defense,” he said. “The prosecution’s case has holes in it. Not small holes, but gigantic holes.”
During his closing argument, Oglesby referred back to the defense attorney’s analogy, producing an empty box. During his closing, Oglesby then placed notes on the box outlining the various elements of the prosecution including the physical evidence, the witness testimony, the Medical Examiner’s report and finally signs for a cat and a mouse and told the jurors everything pointed to the back to the cat and the mouse and there were no holes, which one juror who preferred to remain anonymous characterized later as a “mic-drop” moment for the prosecution.
The juror, who preferred to remain anonymous, said later on Tuesday there was never really any doubt that Beattie threw the fatal punch that ultimately claimed Shupert’s life, but no one on the panel believed Beattie intended to kill Shupert with the blow to the head.
“Out of everybody in the room, nobody believed he intended to kill him,” the juror said. “Did he intend to fight him? Did he throw the punch that killed him? Yes, but there was an issue of intent. Nobody in the room believed he intended to kill him.”
Nonetheless, the issue for the jury was the facts of the case as presented to them and they ultimately returned a guilty verdict on the manslaughter charge based on the overwhelming evidence and testimony. The juror also said the panel also briefly considered the age of the defendant and how the outcome would forever change his life, but ultimately they were required to follow the law and the instructions given to them by Judge Thomas Groton, who presided over the case.
“We had to put that aside,” the juror said. “It didn’t matter that he was just 22 years old and this was going to change his life. We had to follow what the law said and based on the evidence and the testimony, it wasn’t a difficult decision. Everybody was on the same page and it was decided pretty quickly.”
The jury needed just 90 minutes to return a guilty verdict after a day-and-a-half of testimony, but save for the clarification of a definition of one of the counts, the verdict could have come back earlier.
“It wouldn’t have taken that long but we struggled a little with the definition of affray,” the juror said. “The definition for affray implies there were two people involved in a fight, but in the end, we didn’t see it that way. The victim wasn’t a willing participant in the fight. Basically, he punched the victim and the victim died.”
