The home where Amber Lee Leary”s daughter was allegedly beaten on June 28 in Sandy, Utah (KTVX/YouTube)
A Utah couple are charged with attempted murder in the severe beating of the woman’s 3-year-old daughter, authorities announced in a chilling case of alleged child abuse.
Tyrel Scott Belone, 28, and Amber Lee Leary, 29, are both charged with attempted aggravated murder, aggravated child abuse, and child torture, according to Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill. The child, referred to in court documents as C.W., was in critical condition as of Tuesday in a medically-induced coma.
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According to court documents, on June 28, at about 7:15 a.m., officers with the Sandy Police Department responded to a house and found Leary standing outside. She led them into the garage and then the basement, where they found the 3-year-old girl lying on her back.
She did “not appear to be conscious or alert,” but when an officer put his ear to her mouth, he could feel her breathing, as well as a pulse on her right wrist. However, she was unresponsive, with “no movement” in her eyes.
C.W. reportedly had multiple bruises all over her body, with “several bruises” just below both eyes, and “a greenish-blue color over her whole body.” The officers testified “it appeared as though she was not getting enough oxygen.” She was airlifted to a nearby hospital.
Detectives began to question Leary, the girl’s mother, and Belone, Leary’s boyfriend, about what transpired. They learned that the couple had just moved to Utah at the beginning of May, and she was a certified nursing assistant while he was a nurse.
Belone testified that C.W. had regressed in her potty training in the preceding weeks and was “taking off her pants and defecating in the corner.” He also said she “had been combative, biting and scratching, and took a chunk out” of his nose a few days before. He had been caring for the child in the early morning hours in late June as Leary had started a new job, he added.
In the hours before police arrived on June 28, the child had urinated and defecated in the home, and the adults had cleaned it up, according to the complaint. Just before Leary left for work around 5:30 a.m., Belone picked the girl up and threw her on the mattress, but she bounced and “ricocheted,” and her head hit the wall, he reportedly told police.
According to the complaint, Belone “further stated that when he threw C.W., her body skimmed the bed, and it was ‘like a rock skipping over water.'”
“[Belone] described that he grabbed C.W.’s left forearm and left leg and threw her face up. C.W.’s body was perpendicular to the bed, and she contacted the bed with her back,” the complaint adds. “C.W. spun and hit the wall with the right side of her head and face, which took most of the impact. [Belone] said he checked C.W. out and stated that she was breathing fine, her heart rate was steady, and her lungs sounded fine, but she wasn’t ‘really responding.'”
As Leary was about to head out the door, Belone is said to have told her “they needed to fix this,” and that he “had been telling her for weeks.” She left, and he called his mother – a nurse practitioner – for help. He believes it was she who called for emergency medical services.
Belone proceeded to make several admissions, police stated, including “giving her bruises a couple of times,” including on June 27, and striking her “high on the cheekbone” – and that Leary was aware he had hit her.
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The complaint continues:
[The detective] asked [Belone] about punching C.W. in the face. [Belone] stated, “I have knocked her a couple times” and confirmed it was with a closed fist. [Belone] said it was in C.W.’s cheekbone and forehead, mostly, and stated that C.W. cried when he punched her in the cheekbone. [Belone] said most of the time, he punched her in the butt and said that one-time [Belone] gave C.W. a backhand in the bathroom, and she fell. [The detective] asked more about the time [Belone] hit C.W. with a closed fist. [Belone] stated that he hit C.W. with a closed fist in response to C.W. attacking him and gouging his nose when he went to clean up after C.W. pooped in a corner. [Belone] punched C.W. in the temple and told her to stop and let him clean up the mess. [Belone] also said that [Leary] has never physically gotten between him and C.W.
Then there was Leary’s version of events.
She said she was on the way to work when she got a call from Belone, who reportedly stated “You need to come. I think C.W. needs to go to the hospital.” He provided no other details, according to the complaint, only saying, “Just come home.”
Leary did so, and, upon finding C.W. in critical condition, referred to her daughter as “dead with a heartbeat.” Leary then explained how Belone’s mother got involved.
The mother, referred to as Ginger, reportedly asked to see the baby on FaceTime. Leary claimed that Belone initially refused but Leary FaceTimed her before switching over to a normal call. When Ginger saw the baby was unresponsive, she said, “You have to take her to the hospital,” adding, “If you don’t take her, you will both go to jail.”
Leary contended that her partner wouldn’t let her call 911 and said things such as, “If you call, I’ll go to jail, you don’t have any money, you don’t have any friends.”
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When she asked what would happen if her daughter died, Belone is alleged to have responded, “She’ll be fine.” Leary then said she needed to smoke, went outside, called 911, and texted Ginger their address.
According to Leary, Belone was “pleasant and nice” before June, but C.W.’s potty training was frustrating him. Text messages included in the complaint provide jarring details into his apparent state of mind in the days before C.W. was critically injured.
“I am going to murder her,” he allegedly texted Leary on June 22 at 7:25 a.m. “I am going to crack her skull,” he said three hours later, according to the complaint.
“I’m finished with her, we can’t have a life together with her being like this, and now hearing her voice makes me want to kill her,” another message reportedly added. When Leary got home that night, C.W. had “her eyes bruised and swollen shut and a big bruise on the right side of her head.”
In other messages reviewed by detectives, Belone threatened to leave Leary, allegedly saying “These issues have been ongoing and you refuse to acknowledge them but now they’ve come to a breaking point.” He also added, per police: “She is pissing on the floor. No school will take her like this. She is acting completely feral and I’m going to break her nose.”
A pediatrician who evaluated the baby in the hospital reported that C.W. “is at high risk of further injury or death if returned to the hands of the caregiver who inflicted these injuries. C.W.’s current status is guarded.”
Belone is the person accused of the “extreme acts of violence,” but the arrest warrant for Leary maintains that she “made the choice to watch the abuse happen, made the choice not to seek medical care when needed, and made the choice not to seek help from professionals or law enforcement despite the victim’s extreme visible injuries.”
C.W. remained in the intensive care unit of the nearby children’s hospital as of Tuesday.
