C-Falls man sentenced for injuring infant girl

A 21-year-old Columbia Falls man was sentenced to seven years in prison, all suspended, after he pleaded guilty in a child abuse case.

Dalton Lauria was initially charged with felony assault on a minor and faced up to five years in prison and a $50,000 fine if convicted. But in a Jan. 16 plea agreement, the county attorney’s office offered Lauria a suspended seven-year prison sentence if he pleaded guilty to criminal endangerment.

Flathead County District Court Judge Robert Allison sentenced Lauria with the amended charge on April 11. Lauria was given credit for 50 days in jail and ordered to undergo a chemical dependency evaluation and anger management and parenting classes.

Lauria is also prohibited from any unsupervised contact with a minor under 12 unless approved by his probation officer and until after he completed the anger management and parenting classes. That includes his son, who is nearly one year old.

According to court documents, a Columbia Falls doctor reported extensive bruising on an 11-month-old infant he had examined on April 29, 2011. The little girl had “bruising, scrapes, scratches and lesions covering her entire body from head to toe,” and that “there are so many (bruises) that it is almost impossible to describe each and every one of them.”

When interviewed by detectives, Lauria recounted an incident that occurred on the same day as the doctor’s examination. Lauria said he had difficulty feeding the infant while she was partially buckled into a car seat.

When the infant spit up on Lauria and herself, Lauria allegedly said, he grabbed the infant’s face and held it while he cleaned her up. Red marks subsequently appeared on the infant’s face, he allegedly said.

Lauria also allegedly admitted that the bruises and marks on the infant’s legs could have occurred while he was cleaning her, and that the red marks on the back of the infant’s head “most likely” occurred while he was cleaning her.

Jacqueline Edwards, the girl’s mother, testified at Lauria’s sentencing hearing that Lauria sometimes frightened her.

Lauria told the judge staying off drugs would not be a problem and that he had already given all his drug paraphernalia to an “old smoking buddy.” When Judge Allison told Lauria his friend was now in possession of illegal drug paraphernalia and that Lauria should tell him to get rid of it, Lauria said they were no longer friends.

“I didn’t know what else to do with it,” he told the judge.