According to the court documents, the 38-year-old man has been sentenced to 52 years in prison after filming himself using a scarf to hang his girlfriend’s 2-year-old daughter by the neck until she lost consciousness multiple times. Judge sentenced the man to serve from 42 and 52 years behind bars after he pleaded guilty to two counts of child abuse resulting in serious bodily injury. The defendant had initially been charged with first-degree attempted murder before agreeing to a plea deal with prosecutors that included dropping the murder charge.
His name is David John Coleman and he is a convicted sex offender and nine-time felon. The sentencing judge handed down the maximum sentence permitted for the reduced charges. The judge said: “There was extreme violence here. When someone harms a child that age, or no matter the age, in that nature, it’s as bad as it gets.”
The defendant from Nebraska said he was high on methamphetamine. His girlfriend, the girl’s mother, was scrolling through his phone on Dec. 17 when she came to a video that had been filmed three days earlier. The footage showed him “hanging her two year old daughter with a pink scarf, by her neck, from a shelving unit, causing her to become strangled” and “losing the ability to breathe and losing consciousness.” She said the video lasted for five minutes.
According to the court documents, the suspect then grabbed the child roughly by the chest and lifting her with the ligature still tied to her neck to release pressure just enough to allow her to breathe, gasp, cry and gurgle, before dropping her in a hanging position, again, only to restart the previous cycle.
Prosecutors said that the victim can be seen on video turning red and blue in the face. The victim appeared to try crying but was unable to because the ligature was pulled so tightly by the suspect to stop her from breathing, speaking or crying.