Sleeping man fatally beaten with brick in Harrisburg was ‘incredibly smart’ glass artist - pennlive.com

Angelo Ceccarani, 22, beat a man to death with a brick and cinder block behind St Stephen's Episcopal Church on Front Street in Harrisburg on Monday, May 26, 2025, police said. (Jenna Wise, for PennLive)Jenna Wise

To his online friends, Josh Schneider knew more about the art of glass blowing than almost anybody.

Schneider, 42, was an active member of the Facebook group “Glassies” where he shared his expertise with nearly 8,000 members.

But his passion was expensive, and Schneider found himself homeless in Harrisburg this year.

On May 26, while tucked into his sleeping bag on the ground behind St. Stephen’s Episcopal Cathedral on Front Street, police say 22-year-old Angelo Ceccarani beat Schneider to death with a brick and cinder block.

The killing happened at 3 p.m., with unwitting crowds of people gathered for ArtsFest just one block away.

Ceccarani was charged with murder and denied bail. A preliminary hearing has been rescheduled for July 29.

Schneider’s sudden and violent death was a shock to the online glass-blowing community where he’d been a fixture for years, as well as those who’d come to know him around Harrisburg.

Hunter Skeen, a glass artist who lives in Hawaii, told PennLive Schneider was a longtime friend and mentor.

He said their friendship began with Schneider reaching out to him on Facebook after coming across one of Skeen’s research projects.

Schneider taught Skeen different art glass techniques in near-daily phone calls and messages over the last five years, Skeen said. The pair never met in person.

Glassblowing involves blowing air into semi-molten glass with the help of a blowpipe to make useful and decorative objects. In the course of their friendship, Schneider taught Skeen how to create new colors from blown glass and hone his techniques.

Just from looking at a photo of a half-finished project, Schneider seemed to foresee potential missteps and could advise Skeen on how to avoid them.

“He desperately wanted me to succeed,” Skeen said. “He was an incredibly smart man. He had a wonderful brain.”

Skeen said Schneider spent hours researching the history of glass as an artistic medium, even after he no longer had the finances to keep making his own work.

“He knew most anything there was to know about the capabilities of different glasses in different industries... And he knew exactly how to work all of it,” Skeen said.

But glass blowing is extremely expensive to maintain as a career or pastime, mainly because it’s impossible to do at home.

Special tools, including a blowpipe and a marver — a hard, flat surface for rolling the hot glass — are needed, as well as a furnace with the ability to reach 2,000 degrees Celsius for melting glass.

Skeen said buying large oxygen tanks for compressing oxygen while glassblowing can run up to $250 per tank and may only last a few days.

“[Schneider] didn’t really shift out of glasswork. His rocky living situation made it impossible to afford to work,” Skeen said. “It was originally his passion, then it became his job... Then it became an unattainable goal.

“I honestly don’t know how he managed to end up in Harrisburg. I think it was a situation similar to him needing to be anywhere other than where he was, and he found Harrisburg.”

Property records show Schneider had lived across the U.S. before ending up in Harrisburg, including in North Carolina, Illinois and Colorado. PennLive was unable to reach any of his relatives for this story.

Harrisburg resident Jonathan Frazier said he met Schneider years ago and knew him as a “friendly fellow regular” at a local coffee shop. After not seeing him in years, Frazier ran into him downtown, about a month before Schneider died.

“I got the vague impression he might be without a home, but he was nevertheless upbeat,” Frazier said.

Schneider was homeless and kept getting robbed, Skeen said. His outlook on life had spiraled to a dark place.

People experiencing homelessness are much more likely to become victims of violent crimes, studies have shown. A 2022 study conducted by the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office found homeless people are 15 times more likely to be robbed and 19 times more likely to be murdered.

The weekend he died, Schneider was sleeping in the alley behind St. Stephen’s church, along with Ceccarani, police said in an affidavit of probable cause.

St. Stephen’s staff told PennLive they saw Schneider and Ceccarani behind the church in the days leading up to the killing and offered to pray with them. It’s unknown if there were any prior violent incidents between the men.

Ceccarani turned himself in after the killing, telling Harrisburg police he did it because “he was very angry at Schneider because he made a joke about his mother and stole his phone charger,” according to the affidavit.

Schneider was still wrapped in his sleeping bag when police found his body, court documents said.

Schneider’s death snuffed out any potential for returning to the career he loved. Even at his lowest point, Skeen said he kept looking forward to the day he could get back to glassblowing.

“He might not have been physically working with glass, but he was working on our glass with us,” Skeen said. “Every day he was talking about ‘Next time I am in the shop.’”

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