Teen Who Filmed Friend’s Suicide, Bought Rope For Hanging, Pleads Guilty

The Utah teen who allegedly helped his friend die by suicide and also filmed her killing herself, pleaded guilty Tuesday.

Although Tyerell Przybycien, 19, was initially charged with murder after 16-year-old Jchandra Brown’s body was found hanging from a tree in a Maple Lake canyon, Utah, in May 2017, the charges were reduced to child abuse homicide and child pornography – a plea deal accepted by the accused. Additional charges such as failure to report a dead body and witness tampering were also dropped by the prosecutors as part of the deal, New York Post reported.

Despite his reduced charges, Przybycien could be sentenced to life in prison when he appears in court Dec. 7. The reduced charges only affected the minimum prison time he faced. While with the original charge of murder – a first degree felony – he was looking at a mandatory minimum of 15 years in jail, with the revised charges, he faces a minimum sentence of five years.

“We’re arguing that this tragic story, this young lady’s passing away, was a suicide and that my client’s actions did not rise to the level of murder or a lesser equivalent offense,” his attorney Neil Skousen told the Salt Lake Tribune in August, before the charges were reduced.

An array of evidence against Przybycien led investigators to build a case against the accused. For starters, a 10-minute-long video in the victim’s phone proved he filmed the former’s act of taking her own life.

Przybycien was heard asking Brown to “say something, please,” in the beginning of the video, which was viewed by the court during the accused’s trial. After the victim became motionless, an emotional Przybycien continued filming, asking brown “Um, are you there? Move or something,” and finally concluding with, “I guess I’ll just leave this here now.”

The victim left a note near the suicide spot which read, “Watch the video, it’s on my phone.”

In addition, the rope Brown hanged herself with was bought by Przybycien, a receipt found by detectives at the scene proved. The accused also researched on ways to kill oneself, prior to Brown’s death. According to an affidavit, he told investigation he was “suicidal and wanted to watch the victim die to see if it was something he could go through with himself.”

Prosecutors argued during the trial that Przybycien had bragged to his friends about how was help kill Brown and it would be “like getting away with murder.” Defense lawyers for the accused, on the other hand, counter-argued while their client might have bought the materials involved in Brown’s suicide, the victim’s choice of taking her own life was her own and was not a result of provocation.

Recently, Przybycien wrote letters to friends asking them to not speak with police or prosecutors about the case, leading to the presently-dismissed charge of tampering with witnesses.