Sky Walker beat his Mom

[Special2bme]

KENT, Ohio -- The son of a popular Kent State University professor found beaten in her home is now charged with the assault.

Dr. Gertrude Steuernagel was found in the kitchen of her Franklin Township home Thursday after co-workers became concerned when she didn't come to work.

Steuernagel's 18-year-old son Sky Walker is in the Portage County Jail, charged with felonious assault.

When the beloved and respected political science professor didn't show up for her Thursday morning class, her colleagues immediately knew something was wrong.

A colleague went to Steuernagel's Marteney Avenue home and then called sheriff's deputies, who found her badly beaten.

Steuernagel has been a faculty member since 1975 and was one of the first women in the political science department. She has received numerous honors and awards for her work.

Knowing the students are Steuernagel's primary concern, members of her department are searching for the best to temporarily replace her.

Steuernagel is in serious condition in Akron City Hospital's ICU.

Her son is also charged with assault on an officer.

http://www.newsnet5.com/news/18607583/detail.html

[MichaelJCheaney]

Sky Walker?

Seriously?

I'm surprised it took him 18 years....

Although me thinks just having a legal name change would have been a MUCH better way to go about it....

[Dakota Valkyrie]

He had accomplices! They have been arrested also.

http://i43.tinypic.com/2qc4efb.jpghttp://i41.tinypic.com/2dkkghw.jpghttp://i40.tinypic.com/zvvrj8.jpghttp://i40.tinypic.com/2yyryad.png

[Special2bme]

He had accomplices! They have been arrested also.

http://i43.tinypic.com/2qc4efb.jpghttp://i41.tinypic.com/2dkkghw.jpghttp://i40.tinypic.com/zvvrj8.jpghttp://i40.tinypic.com/2yyryad.png

LMAO You and MJC are nuts. Did anywhere in that article did it say Luke Skywalker

[Dakota Valkyrie]

I just assumed he dropped the "Luke". My brother changed his name in his 40's from "Frank" to "Roc". It happens. :lollypop:

[Rockin Ma]

Wonder if he beat his mom because she wouldn't give him money for drugs?

[Jaded]

Sky was autistic...

Sky Walker couldn't tell his mother if he loved her. Or why he liked "The Price is Right."

But Getrude Steuernagel was devoted to her son, nonetheless, even when their world shrank as Walker's severe autism seemingly cut them off from many aspects of a normal life.

Now, Walker, 18, is sitting in a jail cell, accused of beating his mother to death, while her friends and family members struggle to understand why -- an answer that may never come.

Steuernagel, a political science professor who had penned opinion pieces on her son's autism for the university's Daily Kent Stater, was found severely beaten in their Kent, Ohio, home Jan. 29 after university employees called police when she failed to show up for work.

Portage County Sheriff's Office Major Dennis Missimi said Steuernagel, 60, was found on the kitchen floor. Walker was in his room.

"They approached him. There was a slight scuffle that ensued when he was taken into custody," Missimi said of Walker's arrest.

Rushed to the hospital, Steuernagel died Friday without regaining consciousness.

Summit County Medical Examiner Investigator Gary Guenther told ABCNews.com that the office was still waiting for medical records and tests on tissue samples before ruling on Steuernagel's cause of death. But Monday's autopsy revealed "multiple bruising" on her head and chest as well as brain trauma.

Initially charged with attempted murder along with assault on a police officer, Missimi said he expects Walker's charge to be upgraded to murder. The police officer he allegedly assaulted was kicked in the face and has returned to work.

By Steuernagel's own writings, life with Walker was not an easy one. She mused about becoming more and more isolated as her son got older and friends began to shy away from sending invitations to weddings and parties.

And they seemed not to understand her life, nor she theirs.

"I had no patience with good and decent colleagues who told me how busy they were," she wrote in a March 2008 opinion piece for the Stater. "Busy? Try spending an evening sitting in a closet with your back to the door trying to hold it shut while your child kicks it in."

Merryman said that Steuernagel -- known to everyone as "Trudy" -- wasn't interested in candy-coating the reality of living with a severely autistic child. And her life was not an unhappy one.
Merryman said Walker was diagnosed at about 2 ½ with severe spectrum autism. He didn't speak much, but would say certain words often like "Mommy" and "good." Mother and son had their own language, she said. While Walker would say things that didn't make sense to an outsider, his message was perfectly clear to her.

But as he got older, Walker became more and more withdrawn. Leaving his comfort zone became increasingly difficult, Merryman said. And at 18, Walker was both taller and heavier than his mother.

Lori Warner, a licensed psychologist and director of the Hands-On Parent Education Center for autism families at Beaumont Hospitals in Michigan, said living with children, especially teenagers or adults, with low-functioning autism is a high-stress environment where parents have to be on alert at all times.

"For them, I think it's almost like a war zone," Warner told ABCNews.com. "It's almost like they are on eggshells.

But Warner said the act of an autistic child murdering his or her parents is "incredibly rare."

"I've never heard of this happening before," she said. "These are not typically violent people."

Warner, who has not treated Walker, said autistic teenagers present a whole new challenge for parents. No longer can they pick them up like they could a screaming 2-year-old.

And when that child becomes bigger than the parent, tantrums that are so common for so many can become dangerous.

"For some of the kids, they're just flailing and upset and they're just striking out at whatever's around them," she said. "Other kids are aggressing toward specific people."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/AutismNews/Story?id=6848289&page=3

[Ninja0980]

Sad story all the way around in a case like this. I wonder if he even knows what he did?

[Dakota Valkyrie]

Very sad to die for being supermom.

[Athena]

You know, with my newfound cable glory, I was watching a show called Prison Nation on one of the 8 billion channels offered, and they mentioned that, increasingly, the mentally ill are being sent to prision rather than hospitals with the capacity to treat them. Many of these prisons don't have proper psych wings, so these mentally ill people are often stuck in isolation, when generally makes their illnesses worse. Then, at the end of their sentence, they're simply unleashed onto the world, even crazier than they started out.

For all the billions we spend on the prison system, I have a hard time understanding why we don't invest more in rehabilitation and treatment for offenders, mentally ill and otherwise. It would benefit society a great deal.

[Dakota Valkyrie]

For the life of me, I have never figured out why they won't give treatment in prisons. Or instead of building new prisons, build a new hospital and do the inmate shuffle.

As for this mom, she should have placed her son in an appropriate care facility. That way she could spend the time looking for such a place, waiting for an opening, and then making sure her son was settled and cared for. As it was, even without this occurring, she was just leaving him to be stashed wherever the state put him.

She would have enjoyed her son so much more if she knew he was well cared for without her. Then she could focus her attention on her interactions with him without all the other things that come with someone that disabled.

A sad deal all the way around.