John Jefferson
Matthew Dirig (Huntington County Sheriff’s Department).
A 34-year-old Indiana man will spend almost four decades behind bars for putting zip ties around an 8-year-old boy’s neck before locking him in a bedroom where he died.
Huntington County Circuit Court Judge Davin G. Smith sentenced Matthew Joseph Dirig on Tuesday to 40 years in prison with two years suspended and 26 days credit for time served. A jury found Dirig guilty of neglect of a dependent resulting in death on Nov. 25. The incident occurred on Nov. 22, 2022, when Dirig had to pick the boy up from the Boys & Girls Club because he was having a behavioral issue, according to court records obtained by Law&Crime.
Dirig claimed the boy was being “aggressive” after they returned home and locked him in his room from the outside. However, Ring camera video showed that the boy seemed calm as he entered the house. The boy’s mother said her son suffered from mental health issues and was prone to tantrums. She would put him in his room for 5 or 10 minutes when he misbehaved and check on him to see if he calmed down. But Dirig claimed he left the boy in his room for about two hours while he played his video game console, Xbox.
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“Um, I just — I got sidetracked with it,” Dirig told detectives, adding that he would “have to live with that.”
Dirig also failed to check on him when his girlfriend texted him and asked him how the boy was doing. About 45 minutes later, the mother returned home and checked on the boy. She found him unconscious with industrial-sized zip ties around his neck and called 911 while Dirig tried to remove the ties, the affidavit said. First responders rushed to the home but he was “beyond saving” and was pronounced dead.
Detectives arrived on scene and noted everyone seemed to be distraught except for Dirig who was “markedly non-emotional.” Investigators interviewed the mother who told them about her son’s behavioral issues, including displaying suicidal ideations. The boy once tried to tie a phone cord around his neck and had a weeklong stay at the hospital, she said. But she said the boy’s behavior had improved in the months leading up to his death after he was placed on new medication. She did not believe her boyfriend would have intentionally hurt the boy.
Post-Miranda, Dirig said he worked in IT and had the zip ties to bundle cables. He said the victim liked to play with them and also was hanging up some LED lights in his room which is why they were in his room in the first place. Dirig said he believed the boy was upset and purposefully wrapped the zip ties around his neck in a suicide attempt. But detectives didn’t believe the boy would have been strong enough to pull the zip ties tight enough to cause asphyxiation. Investigators also were skeptical of Dirig’s claims that he had difficulty removing the ties from the boy’s neck.
From the affidavit:
The bruising and abrasion in the front of the neck is notably different than the marking on the back, suggesting possible friction burn, and the ligature appears to have been at an angle that suggests pulling force was applied from the posterior neck. Extensive testing with cable ties like the ones recovered from the scene, as well as the current peer-reviewed forensic pathology research concerning suicide and homicide by means of ligature strangulation, suggests both the difficulty a small child would have applying adequate tension to a cable tie to achieve this end and the ease with which the locking mechanisms of these cable ties can be overcome with a small, flathead screwdriver. It is unlikely that someone who regularly works with cable ties, like Matt Dirig, would fail to execute effective practices in removing these instruments.
Detectives found the same zip ties used on the boy’s neck in the kitchen trash. He also refused to allow cops to search his phone. A medical examiner listed the manner of death as unknown but could not rule out homicide.
Other family members of the boy and his mother also came forward to express concerns about Dirig. He and the victim’s mother had met about six months prior to the incident and he moved in about a month later. Her family members said Dirig was “manipulative” and had given her an ultimatum that he would break up with her unless she put the boy in a mental institution, they said. The family members believed she was covering for him, according to the affidavit. She has not been charged. Her name and the boy’s name were both redacted from the affidavit.
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