BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (WTNH) — The “Connecticut Cannibal” Tyree Smith will be released from prison soon, a decision that has caused a lot of controversy across the state.
NewsNation affiliate WTNH has obtained prison documents related to an incident report at a state correctional facility where Tyree Smith was being held.
Smith was found not guilty because of insanity for crimes so grotesque, so unimaginable, they make some squirm just hearing about them. After murdering Angel Gonzalez with a hatchet inside a Bridgeport apartment in 2011, Smith did the unthinkable, eating portions of his victim’s brain and eyeball.
“He gets to reunite with his family, and April 25 was Angel’s birthday,” Talitha Frazier, the victim’s sister-in-law, said exclusively to News 8. “He turned 57, we didn’t get to see him, we only have ashes, and it hurts.”
For Gonzalez’s family, the anger has not faded. Now, outrage is burning hotter than ever because Smith was given conditional release — after serving only a portion of a 60 year sentence.
News 8 obtained new prison documents from the Connecticut Department of Correction that reveal a darker, more violent side to Smith: a side that the victim’s family says never went away.
Smith was held at the Garner Correctional Facility back in April 2013 when he was first charged with murder, and we’ve learned anger erupted with no warning, and there was a fight inside the prison. Smith had to be separated from the rest of the prison population.
It says that Smith admitted to an officer that an inmate, whose name has been redacted, was talking trash to him and Smith hit him in the face and then shoved him to the ground. The report goes on to say the inmate who was attacked did not fight back.
Frazier says this is yet more proof that Smith is unhinged.
“It angers me and it shocks me because the whole time you’re in jail you’re pleading insanity but yet you’re still doing something violent to another person,” Frazier said.
After that prison brawl, authorities determined Smith was too dangerous to return to the general inmate population. Instead, he was placed into segregation. His file was stamped with this warning:
“The inmate’s presence poses a serious threat to life, property, other inmates, or facility security.”
News 8 also discovered that while incarcerated, Smith faced charges for possessing contraband. It’s unclear what it was. And yet, the state’s psychiatric review board now says the so-called Connecticut cannibal has been rehabilitated, and that it’s safe for him to return to society.
‘It’s a tragedy he harmed another person and I’d like to know why this wasn’t brought up when he went for his hearing,” Frazier said.
As Smith prepares to step back into the world at an undisclosed group home in Connecticut, the family of Gonzalez says they’re left wondering whether true evil-ever really disappears.
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