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Grandson gets prison; family pleads for treatment

Karen Dorn Steele
Staff writer
May 28, 2008

Ryan Snow, the bipolar 24-year-old who slit his beloved grandfather’s throat while off his medications, was sentenced Tuesday to 22 and a half years in prison -- despite vigorous efforts by his public defender and pleas from his family to have him treated in a mental hospital.

Spokane County Superior Court Judge Gregory D. Sypolt rejected a request from the prosecutor’s office for a sentence that would have sent Snow to prison for much longer -- nearly 29 years -- based on a Washington state Department of Corrections presentencing report that says he’s an ongoing threat to the community.

“Based on his acts, the state feels Snow should be sentenced to the high end” of the sentencing range, said deputy prosecutor Dale Nagy.

But Snow’s family, including the grandmother widowed by Snow’s act on July 29, 2006, stood before Sypolt and asked the judge to consider his long struggle with mental illness.

Connie Bittick described how she and her late husband James Bittick struggled to raise Snow from childhood, finding counselors and psychiatrists for the difficult child who never socialized with other children and had major problems in school. He and his grandfather shared a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, she said.

“He would never, ever have hurt his grandfather if he’d been in his right mind,” Bittick said.

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