Emily Fitzgerald / For Nisqually Valley News
Christopher Snyder, one of two men convicted for setting fire to a man at an Olympia homeless encampment last year, has been sentenced to roughly 53 years in prison.
“Mr. Snyder is a violent man who a jury found responsible for the horrifically violent death of the victim in this case,” Judge Christopher Lanese said during Snyder’s sentencing hearing on Wednesday, Nov. 26.
Snyder was convicted by a jury of multiple charges, including first-degree murder and witness tampering, following a three-week trial that ended Nov. 7. He intends to file an appeal, his attorney confirmed Wednesday.
When given the opportunity to address the victim’s family and the judge before his sentencing, Snyder expressed his “sympathies and condolences and stuff,” but maintained his innocence.
“I didn’t do it,” Snyder said. “There was nothing I could have done to stop it.”
He added that he was around during the murder and said he “might have made some mistakes afterwards,” but said, “I couldn’t be the one to watch my brother fall.”
Snyder and his co-defendant, Kevin James Hinzpeter, 32, were convicted for confronting 47-year-old Zebediah “Donkey” Schoening at an encampment known as “the Jungle” on Oct. 8, 2024, and setting him on fire with a chemical before fleeing the scene.
Schoening reportedly identified Hinzpeter to first responders as the one who set him on fire.
Snyder later returned to “the Jungle” to steal belongings from the victim’s camp and interrogate witnesses. He reportedly shot one of the witnesses with a pellet gun, according to court documents.
While the co-defendants were initially charged with attempted murder, the charges were upgraded to first-degree murder after the victim died from his injuries about two weeks after the attack.
“Altogether, it was a horrible, agonizing two weeks, and then death,” Robin Schoening, Zebediah’s ex-wife and the mother of his eldest child, said during Snyder’s sentencing hearing on Wednesday.
She and her daughter, Mariah Schoening, described Zebediah as a talented artist and loving father before he made a series of poor decisions that landed him on the street.
Now, he will never get a chance to redeem himself.
“My father did not deserve to be burned. He did not deserve to suffer. He did not deserve to have his life, his hopes and his chances taken from him,” Mariah Schoening said.
Hinzpeter pleaded guilty Oct. 8 to one count of second-degree murder. All other charges were dropped as part of a plea deal. He was sentenced Nov. 17 to roughly 14 years in prison.
That sentence was in the mid-point of his standard sentencing range, which is calculated based on the severity of the crime and the defendant’s criminal history.
The standard sentencing range in Snyder’s case was significantly higher than Hinzpeter’s at roughly 34 to 45 years, partially due to eight prior assault convictions on his record.
“Prisons were built for people like Mr. Snyder,” Deputy Prosecutor Elizabeth McMullen said.
The prosecution asked for Snyder to be sentenced on the high end of the range for the murder charge and asked for the sentence on the witness tampering charge to run concurrently to the murder sentence, rather than consecutively.
“Those are two separate incidents that if the court sentences altogether, essentially, the intimidating witness, Mr. Snyder will not receive a sentence for,” McMullen said. “I understand the amount of time that the state is asking for, but given the defendant’s history and the evidence that the court heard throughout the trial process, I believe that that sentence is warranted.”
Defense attorney Albert Didcock argued that it would be unfair under the law for Snyder to receive a dramatically higher sentence than Hinzpeter for the same crime, and asked for Snyder to only be sentenced to the bare minimum jail time required by law for his case: 27 years.
“Mr. Snyder sees himself as not involved here. The evidence at most showed that Mr. Snyder was an accomplice,” Didcock said Wednesday.
In Hinzpeter’s case, both the defense and prosecution noted that his crimes were “out of character” for him, and acknowledged that he took responsibility for his actions and was suffering from severe mental health and substance abuse issues at the time of the incident.
Hinzpeter also did not appear to commit additional troubling crimes, like tampering with witnesses, after the crime, like Snyder did.
“Although Mr. Hinzpeter may have been the one who dumped the gas/lit the match, let’s say that it appeared to be very much of Mr. Snyder’s origin in terms of either instigating, supporting or sending him in that direction,” Lanese said Wednesday.
He granted the prosecution’s request for a sentence at the high end of the range for the murder charge, 548 months, followed by 90 months for the witness tampering charges for a total of 638 months.
Speaking to a reporter after Snyder’s sentencing, Mariah Schoening said she and her family were satisfied with the outcomes of the two cases.
“I feel like they were both pretty much what my family was hoping for,” she said.
The family is grateful that Zebediah’s two infant daughters will be able to grow up and learn about who their father was outside of how he died, she added.
