Pittsburgh man who killed another man with a table leg gets 3 to 6 years in prison
A Pittsburgh man who killed another man with a table leg last year will spend three to six years in state prison.
Walter Jones, 55, of the city’s Knoxville neighborhood, pleaded guilty in July to one count of third-degree murder. Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Alexander P. Bicket also ordered Jones to serve three years of probation.
Prosecutors said Man Pradhan, 34, died on Aug. 27, 2021, from injuries he suffered 10 days earlier.
Police said Jones struck Pradhan in the head with a table leg after a fight on Reifert Street in Knoxville.
A criminal complaint filed against Jones said he told police that Pradhan and two other men — including one he said was carrying a machete — confronted him about the volume of the music he was playing.
Jones said he went inside his home and retrieved a table leg. Security footage from the area showed Jones walk into the street from the direction of his home with the table leg resting on his shoulder. The video then showed Jones threatening Pradhan and another man with it.
It then shows him strike Pradhan in the left side of his head with a great amount of force, police said.
Pradhan was taken to a local hospital in critical condition and died 10 days later.
His wife, Sapana Rai, said in a victim impact statement that she and her husband met at a refugee camp in Nepal after fleeing Bhutan.
They spent 15 years in the camp before coming to the United States.
They arrived in Pittsburgh in 2013 and were saving money to buy their own home, she said.
When Pradhan was attacked, Rai wrote, she and her 10-year-old son were in California with her sister.
“I couldn’t understand how someone could do this to my husband,” Rai said. “He was always kindhearted, friendly, charming and had lots of friends.”
She said he was a caring father.
His death has left her depressed, and she no longer feels safe, Rai told the court. She and her son now live with her nephew.
“We wanted so badly to make a future here, but now everything is moving backwards for my son and me,” Rai wrote. “Nothing is like it was before Man was killed.”
Paula Reed Ward is a TribLive reporter covering federal and Allegheny County courts. She joined the Trib in 2020 after spending nearly 17 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team. She is the author of "Death by Cyanide." She can be reached at pward@triblive.com.
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