Billing Records Show Tylim Hatchett Was Left Alone for 356 Hours Before He Starved to Death at 59 Pounds

The homicide file on Tylim Hatchett is not a riddle about cerebral palsy. It is a timesheet. Montgomery County prosecutors say the 21-year-old, who was blind, nonverbal, and unable to walk, was left alone in a Dresher apartment for 356 of the 425 hours between September 1 and September 18, 2024. That is 82 percent of the last stretch of his life. When Upper Dublin Township police reached the apartment on the night of September 18, he weighed 59 pounds. The coroner ruled the death a homicide: complications of cerebral palsy in the setting of neglect.

Tylim lived with his mother, Sherrilynn Hawkins, in the 1100 block of Market Street, in the Dresher section of Upper Dublin Township. He could not feed himself, could not take his own medication, and could not place a phone call. Investigators said medical charts kept through the home-care company Aveanna Healthcare listed daily medicines a caregiver was supposed to prepare. Detectives later said those medicines were not being given. A body that had been about 90 pounds seven months earlier had lost 31 pounds. Fifty-nine pounds is what the autopsy recorded.

District Attorney Kevin R. Steele described the case, in a December 31, 2024 briefing carried by CBS Philadelphia, in language that left little room for a medical euphemism. “He’s a care-dependent person and they starved him to death,” Steele said. He told reporters Tylim was blind and deaf, used a wheelchair, and was not receiving medication. “There was no feeding, there was no water. He starved to death in his apartment and was laying on the floor when the police came. This is a horrible death.”

The call that brought police was itself part of the neglect. Vernon Hatchett, Tylim’s father, was at the apartment. Investigators said he told them he found his son unresponsive around 6 p.m. and that nearly two hours passed before anyone dialed 911. Officers were dispatched around 7:50 p.m. Tylim was pronounced dead where he lay. Steele later called Vernon dangerous and said the father knew he was wanted.

The Money Moved While the Apartment Stayed Empty

Hawkins and a family friend, Loretta Harris of Philadelphia, were paid through Aveanna to provide that care. Court papers described by local reporters put Hawkins’s 2024 payments at $36,383 and Harris’s at $12,789, including stretches in which the women billed for hours they were not in the apartment. Cell-phone location data, Steele’s office said, showed caregivers clocking in from somewhere else. Some absences ran as long as 24 hours. Between February 17 and September 18, 2024, Harris collected roughly $12,000 for care prosecutors say she did not provide.

That is why the charging documents read like a fraud case stapled to a death case. Pennsylvania’s neglect-of-a-care-dependent-person law, 18 Pa.C.S. § 2713, makes it a crime for a caretaker to intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly cause serious bodily injury or death by failing to provide the treatment, care, goods, or services needed to preserve the health of a person who depends on them. When the victim dies, the statute calls that a first-degree felony. A companion offense, abuse of a care-dependent person, sits in § 2713.1. Theft by deception covered the hours that were billed and not worked. The billing system did not save Tylim. It did create a paper trail a homicide detective could read.

On December 31, 2024, Steele announced arrests. Hawkins, then in her early forties, was taken into custody on counts that included first-degree murder, third-degree murder, neglect of a care-dependent person, abuse of a care-dependent person, and theft by deception. Harris, then 45, faced neglect and theft counts. Vernon Hatchett, also known as Khaliyl Ward, of the 300 block of Brookdale Avenue in the Glenside section of Upper Dublin, was not in handcuffs. His charges included neglect of a care-dependent person, abuse of a care-dependent person, and conspiracy to commit involuntary manslaughter. An arrest warrant followed. He has not answered it.

A 25-to-50-Year Sentence, Then Probation for the Aide

On October 20, 2025, Hawkins stood before Common Pleas Judge Wendy G. Rothstein and pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, neglect of a care-dependent person, theft by deception, and conspiracy to commit theft by deception. Rothstein sentenced her to 25 to 50 years in state prison. The first-degree murder count did not survive the plea. The homicide finding did. Defense attorney Joseph Schultz told the court, in remarks reported by WPVI, that “up until the end, she was a great care provider for him, and obviously at the end it became too much for her, and she has now accepted responsibility.” The weight chart is the rebuttal. A caregiver who is overwhelmed still has a phone. Tylim did not.

Harris had already entered guilty pleas to felonies that included abuse of a care-dependent person, theft by deception, and conspiracy. In December 2025 a judge sentenced her to five years of probation, 50 hours of community service, and the costs of prosecution. She did not go to state prison. The woman who lived with Tylim received a term that can run half a century. The paid friend who billed for visits received supervision. Readers can argue about that split. They cannot argue that both women admitted the care was not delivered.

The Father Is Still the Open Count

Vernon Hatchett, 40, has been a fugitive since the charges were filed. The reward started at $5,000, rose to $7,500 on the day Hawkins was sentenced, and reached $10,000 on March 25, 2026, when Steele and Upper Dublin Police Chief Francis Wheatley asked the public again for a sighting. Anyone who sees him is supposed to call 911, not approach him. Steele has already said the man knows he is wanted. Fifteen months of a rising reward is not a paperwork delay. It is a manhunt that has not ended.

Aveanna has said it runs compliance programs, uses location checks, and is cooperating. That is the sentence every vendor issues when a prosecutor is already in the invoices. The test is narrower. Did any supervisor see 356 missing hours inside 18 days, or did the system become interesting only after a coroner wrote “homicide”? A company that sells visit verification is selling the idea that a totally dependent adult cannot vanish from a shift without a human noticing. Tylim vanished from most of his shifts and died on the floor.

The AEGIS Alliance has covered other rooms where dependence was treated as a private inconvenience. A Waterbury, Connecticut, stepson set a fire to get out of an alleged two-decade captivity. A New Jersey mother who killed her daughters by drugging them later died in an Arizona prison. In Pennsylvania, a father and his girlfriend were charged after a 12-year-old was allegedly shackled. None of those files is Tylim’s. All of them ask who was paid, or trusted, to be in the room.

Adult protective services, the coroner, and Aveanna still owe a public timeline of every billed hour that was not a visit. Hawkins is inside a state sentence of 25 to 50 years. Harris is on probation. Vernon Hatchett is the count that is still walking around. More reporting on cases like this sits in the crime news file. Tylim Hatchett did not die because a diagnosis ran out of time. He died because the adults who billed for his hours stopped putting food in front of a man who could not feed himself, and then waited before they called for help.