[blackhole]

Jury finds father guilty in death of 4-year-old

A Spokane County Superior Court jury decided that welder Jonathan Lytle, 30, was guilty in the long-running torture that led to the death of Summer Phelps. The girl was beaten, bitten, burned and denied food for long periods before she died on March 10, 2007.

By The Associated Press

SPOKANE — A Spokane man was convicted of homicide by abuse on Friday for the horrific death of his 4-year-old daughter.

A Spokane County Superior Court jury decided that welder Jonathan Lytle, 30, was guilty in the long-running torture that led to the death of Summer Phelps. The girl was beaten, bitten, burned and denied food for long periods before she died on March 10, 2007.

Summer's stepmother, Adriana Lytle, has already pleaded guilty to homicide by abuse and is in the Spokane County Jail awaiting sentencing. She faces up to 20 years in prison.

Lytle was also convicted of the aggravating factors of deliberate cruelty, vulnerability of the child and the defendant violating his position of trust. Lytle faces a sentence of life in prison.

The jury deliberated only four hours before returning the verdict.

Summer's mother, Elizabeth Phelps, recently sued Child Protective Services for failing to protect her daughter. Phelps, of Poulsbo, had custody of Summer but allowed the child to visit the Lytles in Spokane for a month in August 2006 and never reclaimed her.

In closing arguments Thursday, Deputy Prosecutor Larry Steinmetz contended the Lytles turned their tiny apartment into a "torture chamber" where Summer was beaten, burned, shocked with an electric dog collar, forced to wash urine-soaked clothes, starved and dunked in a bathtub for punishment.

"Did the defendant have his head buried in the sand in that apartment and not know what was going on in the last few months of his daughter's life, or was he a willing participant in the brutal and violent actions that caused her death?" Steinmetz asked.

Defense lawyer Edward Carroll blamed most of the victim's bruises and other injuries on Adriana Lytle, saying Jonathan Lytle worked long hours to support his family and was gone when most of the abuse occurred.

He portrayed Lytle as an incompetent parent who was innocent of "extreme indifference to human life."

"He was ignorant, inept as a parent, but he was not indifferent to whether she lived or died," Carroll said.

Prosecutors said Lytle told detectives that he beat Summer with a belt on the day of her death for moving too slowly to clean up garbage before a nurse's scheduled visit to the apartment.

He took her out of the apartment that morning for a drive to Cheney so the nurse wouldn't see her head-to-toe bruises.

"By removing the child from the apartment on March 10, we know the defendant evaded medical care for Summer. If the nurse had seen those injuries, she would have called law enforcement," Steinmetz said.

It took Lytle an hour and a half to bring his daughter to the hospital after she was found underwater in the bathtub, where she had been forced to wash clothes for hours after she returned, prosecutors said.

This is the "Local News" section of my newspaper.

[Nuclear1]

I hate people.

[karajorma]

Summer's mother, Elizabeth Phelps, recently sued Child Protective Services for failing to protect her daughter. Phelps, of Poulsbo, had custody of Summer but allowed the child to visit the Lytles in Spokane for a month in August 2006 and never reclaimed her.

I loved this line. Didn't care much about her daughter until there was money in it by the looks of it.


The whole of the UK is up in arms over a similar case at the moment. Although in this case it's not just the fact that a kid was murdered but the fact that the council failed to act to stop it happening.

[Colonol Dekker]

I'm not too keen on there topics but i'll just choose to not read.

[Mars]

I didn't read it, I don't have to. I've read too many cases that were very similar.

And yes, I hate people.

[Rick James]

I didn't read it, I don't have to. I've read too many cases that were very similar.

And yes, I hate people.

Misanthropes unite.

...

Oh wait, I forgot. We hate each other.

[CKid]

This happened in 2005 but the trail just started a few days ago. Phoenix was only 5 years old.

Quote from:  http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/story/4249066p-4892492c.html

Phoenix Sinclair was being deprived of food and forced to eat her own vomit in the days before she finally succumbed to a prolonged period of abuse and neglect that included being repeatedly shot with a pellet gun and choked unconscious, jurors heard Wednesday.

"Some horrible things have happened to that little girl," a visibly distraught Cpl. Tara Clelland-Hall told the girl's mother, Samantha Kematch, near the end of a four-hour videotaped interview following her March 2006 arrest.
"It absolutely breaks my heart the things that little girl went through in her short little life."

Kematch and her former common-law husband, Karl McKay, are on trial for first-degree murder for the June 2005 death of Phoenix on the Fisher River First Nation about 200 kilometres north of Winnipeg. The killing wasn't discovered by police until McKay's teenaged son told his mother about what happened 10 months later.

The boy, now 18, took the witness stand Wednesday and pointed the finger of blame directly at McKay and Kematch, accusing them of countless violent and degrading acts and describing how Phoenix morphed from a "chubby" and happy child into a skinny child covered in cuts and bruises who would spend nearly every minute laying in her room without any food.

He wiped away tears as he told court how he tried offering a helping hand to his stepsister, who had been kept a virtual prisoner in her own home. He described trying to feed a starving Phoenix some bread and water only to be caught and threatened by Kematch.

"Samantha said what the f--k are you giving my daughter food for?" he said.

"I'd feel sorry for her. She would say 'I'm hungry'."

He said McKay repeatedly played a "game" with Phoenix that he called "chicken" which involved picking her up by the throat, wrapping both hands around her neck and "choking her out."

"Then he'd throw her to the ground," said the teen, noting visible finger marks would be left on her neck. "She'd make this weird scream. It was like someone had cut off her arm, like she was screaming to death."

McKay also liked to shoot Phoenix with a pellet gun, telling the girl to "run" and then shooting her repeatedly in the back and making her cry out in agony.

"He'd shoot her for the fun of it," he said, noting the abuse would leave pellet marks all over her back.

The teen said Kematch would often hit Phoenix with a metal bar and stool, especially when she'd urinate or defecate in her pants after Kematch refused to let her go to the washroom. Sometimes McKay and Kematch would throw Phoenix around, either to the ground or into furniture, he said. They also shaved the girl's head bald, court was told.

Kematch's lawyer, Roberta Campbell, suggested to the teen in cross-examination that it was McKay who was "most violent" with Phoenix. She also accused McKay of calling Phoenix degrading names like "f--king little baby" and "whore" while beating her.

"They were doing the same thing, equally," the teen replied.

"Isn't it true that sometimes he would hit Phoenix so much that she wouldn't even cry anymore?" asked Campbell.

"Yes," he answered.

McKay's lawyer, Mike Cook, suggested some of Phoenix's injuries could have been suffered during friendly "wrestling matches" that his client was having with the little girl. McKay's son said he believed the physical abuse was intentional, not accidental.

Earlier in the day, the 10-woman, two man jury watched the last portion of Kematch's video statement in which she blamed McKay for Phoenix's death and said he refused to let her go to police to disclose what happened.

"I feel ashamed. I feel stupid. She didn't deserve anything like that. I think about it every day," she said. "I didn't want to see my kid like that. It hurt to see her like that. He wouldn't let me help her. He'd get mad at me."

However, Kematch admitted to beating Phoenix at times for no clear reason.

"I'd hit her because I'd get mad at her. I knew that wasn't right," she said.

Jurors heard how Phoenix spent her last hours naked, with an injury to her buttocks, lying on a cold basement floor. Kematch says McKay pushed her daughter violently to the ground, causing the child to bang her head on the concrete the day before her death.

"I know it wasn't planned," Kematch said.

"We didn't do it purposely. It was just something that got out of hand. An accident. This wasn't supposed to happen. I never wanted this to happen."

She said McKay asked her to bring him a garbage bag to wrap the child in when they discovered the next day she wasn't breathing. She said McKay put Phoenix in the trunk of a car, and buried her in a hole in a wooded area near the dump at Fisher River reserve.

The trial continues today with McKay's youngest son expected to testify against him on behalf of the Crown.

[Retsof]

Lethal Injection is too good for these people...

[CKid]

Lethal Injection is too good for these people...

In Canada we don't have the death penalty.

[tinfoil]

yeah but in Canada could you imagine what the other inmates would do to those assholes?
the best penalty for people like that would be no sentence at all because then they wouldn't last a day before someone killed or almost killed them.

[Mars]

I didn't read it, I don't have to. I've read too many cases that were very similar.

And yes, I hate people.

Misanthropes unite.

...

Oh wait, I forgot. We hate each other.

In this case "people" is a misnomer. It refers to people at large, or society that produces such horrific events. Obviously no one hates the kid, who qualifies as "people," but not in the sense that I'm referring to.

[haloboy100]

yeah but in Canada could you imagine what the other inmates would do to those assholes?
the best penalty for people like that would be no sentence at all because then they wouldn't last a day before someone killed or almost killed them.

What happened to lifetime imprisonment? Let the homosexual raping teach them a lesson.

[Mars]

Canadian prisons tend to be better than American once IIRC 

[haloboy100]

Canadian prisons tend to be better than American once IIRC 

Personally, I liked how that kind of creepy **** happened in prison. It offered more motivation not to do something that will get you in there to begin with.

[Mars]

It seems to me though that it encourages criminal habits within it [the prison system]. It seems to me, in order to be effective prisoners should be forced to do something constructive, like build something. Remember, something like 1% of Americans are behind bars.

[Hellstryker]

Lethal Injection is too good for these people...

[Whitelight]

I`m from the US, and most the people in the Erie county prison system aren`t there for violent crimes, but for non payment of child support and DUI`s.  But its these, (non-violent) prisoners that are able to get out on work release.

Isn`t the reason for prison to re-habilate the criminal?

Our prison system just plain does not work..  There are to many repeat offenders that end up back in prison.

[tinfoil]

Our prison system just plain does not work..  There are to many repeat offenders that end up back in prison.

sad but true. atm though theres nothing better.

[haloboy100]

Yeah, second that. Hope Harper fixes the crime more than he says he will.

[tinfoil]

Bah Harper won't do nothin' the only reason people voted for him was because Dion was mentally confused and Layton belongs in an institution.