Eight men incarcerated at the Allegheny County Jail were ordered held for trial after a preliminary hearing laid out, minute by minute, how fellow inmate Tyrone Good was beaten to death inside his own cell. Good, 44, was killed on May 13 inside Cell No. 116 on Pod 4D, about 20 minutes after he had been moved there from restrictive housing. Investigators say the attack was retribution for Good's alleged role in the death of his girlfriend, Michelle Sturdivant.
Kendall McKoy, Justin Allen, Delvonte Woodson, Jerrell Rockymore, Mark Beavers, Tavarius Lee, Shawn Davis and Anthony Schmitt were all held for trial on criminal homicide, conspiracy and kidnapping charges, according to TribLIVE. Prosecutors told the court that surveillance video captured the men plotting and planning the assault beforehand, though the footage did not show what happened once Good was inside the cell itself, per the same outlet. The hearing was held in a large courtroom on the third floor of the Allegheny County Courthouse, while members of the public and Good's family were required to watch the proceedings via video stream from a fifth-floor courtroom, TribLIVE reports.
According to the outlet's account of testimony, Good arrived on Pod 4D around 12:24 p.m. carrying two large clear bags of clothing and spent several minutes in the pod's common area before entering Cell No. 116. At 12:44 p.m., Mark Beavers allegedly gave Kendall McKoy a thumbs-up, and six of the men — McKoy, Allen, Woodson, Rockymore, Beavers and Lee — entered the cell together one minute later, while Shawn Davis and Anthony Schmitt initially remained near the door, according to CBS Pittsburgh. Davis and Schmitt reportedly entered the cell about four minutes later, and all eight men stayed inside for roughly six and a half minutes before leaving around 12:50 p.m.
Good's Final Minutes and the Cause of Death
TribLIVE's report states Good walked out of the cell about eight minutes after the group left, blood visible on his lime-green jail uniform, before collapsing at a correction officer's desk. He died a short time later at UPMC Mercy. Photos shown during the hearing depicted blood across the floor, walls, toilet area and sink of the cell, the outlet reports.
An autopsy found Good had been stabbed multiple times, but severe blunt-force trauma to the head was determined to be his cause of death, according to CBS Pittsburgh's reporting on the case. The Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office said the superficial stab wounds were consistent with a shank, per TribLIVE's account of the hearing. Investigators also said the men attempted to dispose of blood-soaked clothing, and officers later found apparent blood on shoes, pants, shirts and socks.
A Request for a Transfer, Then a Fatal Move
Court testimony described a chain of events that began weeks before the killing. Kendall McKoy, identified as a pod worker, is said to have been a close friend of Michelle Sturdivant and her son, and McKoy allegedly learned of Sturdivant's death in a phone call shortly after her body was found on December 28. Good had been accused of killing Sturdivant that December and was arrested months later in Atlanta before being brought to the Allegheny County Jail in April, according to the hearing testimony reported by TribLIVE.
On April 17, McKoy reportedly filed a jail request claiming Good was his cousin and asking that Good be transferred to Pod 4D. Jail officials dismissed that request a few days later, but moved Good to Pod 4D anyway, with no explanation offered for the decision, per the outlet's reporting. McKoy's grandmother reportedly told investigators that Good had killed Ricky's mother, and McKoy acknowledged he was struggling with Sturdivant's death, TribLIVE reports.
Detectives Build the Case, Defense Pushes Back
Allegheny County police detective Deanna Shuba and Sergeant Hunter Sarver, both assigned to the jail, led the investigation. Sarver testified that he identified each defendant within 20 minutes of learning of the attack and said he had written dozens of reports involving each man, according to TribLIVE's coverage of the hearing. Sarver and his partner also photographed the defendants and collected the clothing they wore the day of the attack.
Defense attorneys argued that mere presence in the cell did not establish that their clients had committed a crime, the outlet reports. District Attorney Matthew Goddard said the eight men planned the crime together, and Magisterial District Judge Hillary Wheatley was reportedly not convinced by the defense's argument before ordering all eight held for trial. Conspiracy to commit kidnapping charges were dismissed for all defendants, according to TribLIVE's report. CBS Pittsburgh, however, reported the men face charges of criminal homicide, criminal conspiracy and tampering with evidence — a discrepancy in how the charges have been described across outlets.
Staffing Strain and Leadership Turnover at the Jail
The case has drawn renewed attention to conditions inside the jail. A unit manager said Level 4, which houses maximum-security prisoners, holds between 450 and 500 incarcerated people, and the facility has at times had just one officer responsible for 95 inmates at a time, according to a TribLIVE community report. As of the week of that report, the jail had 13 officer vacancies and just under 400 officers on staff after hiring roughly 100 amid attrition, and the jail's population stood at 1,686 as of that Friday, down from a peak of 1,982 in September.
The corrections officer who was working on the pod at the time of the attack was suspended afterward, per the community report. Warden Trevor Wingard, who has led the jail since January 2025, is leaving at the end of the month for an executive position with North Carolina's department of corrections, the same report notes.
Prior Criminal Histories Among the Defendants
Several of the men held for trial have other pending cases. McKoy, 24, was previously charged in connection with the fatal 2021 shooting of an Uber driver in Pittsburgh's Sheraden neighborhood, according to CBS Pittsburgh. Woodson, 20, was charged with shooting at police officers in McKees Rocks in 2024, when he was 17. Beavers, 27, is awaiting trial on assault and firearms charges out of McKees Rocks and was indicted the previous year on alleged federal firearms violations, the station reports. The other defendants held for trial include Allen, 26; Rockymore, 19; Lee, 20; Davis, 23; and Schmitt, 24.
