Chelsea Renee Duperon (Detroit Police Dept.) and the home where she allegedly beat her daughter to death (WJBK screenshot)
A 30-year-old mother in Michigan was arrested for allegedly killing her 8-year-old daughter, beating the child so badly that prosecutors said the child was “completely unrecognizable.”
Chelsea Renee Duperon was taken into custody over the weekend and charged with one count of felony murder and one count of first-degree child abuse in the slaying of Lyla Cassel, authorities announced.
Authorities say Duperon severely beat the little girl inside their family home, leaving her for days rather than seeking medical attention.
According to a news release from the Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, officers with the Wayne Police Department at about 5:19 a.m. on March 16 responded to a residence in the 35200 block of Phyllis Street about reports of a child not breathing.
Upon arriving at the scene, first responders say they located the child — later identified as Lyla — in a bedroom inside the home. She was “unresponsive, suffering from multiple injuries to her head and neck.” Emergency medical personnel arrived a short while later and transported Lyla to a hospital where she was pronounced dead.
“It is alleged the Defendant Duperon fatally assaulted the child,” prosecutors wrote.
Duperon was placed under arrest and appeared in court for her arraignment on Tuesday where prosecutors said Duperon attacked her daughter on Wednesday, March 13, then left her to die a slow and agonizing death.
“The sheer brutality that innocent 8-year-old Lyla suffered on March 13 of 2024 is really like nothing I’ve ever seen in my five years of handling child abuse cases,” Wayne County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Erin Wilmoth said during the proceeding, according to courtroom footage posted by Detroit Fox affiliate WJBK.
By the time authorities arrived at the scene three days later, Wilmoth said Lyla had died. The cause of death was determined to be “massive” blunt force trauma to the head, neck, and face which ultimately caused “excessive brain swelling.”
The prosecutor also said that despite suffering the heinous beating at the hands of her mother, Lyla remained alive for some time and would have lived if Duperon or her boyfriend had called 911.
“She could have been saved,” Wilmoth said. “Lyla was just placed in a bed. Her mother went out to the store to get diapers because this child could not go to the bathroom — diapers, heating pads, Vaseline as well as some liquor for herself — while her daughter is lying in bed dying a slow death.”
During her interview with police, Duperon initially claimed her daughter had been injured when she fell down the stairs, but details in her story repeatedly changed, Detroit CBS affiliate WWJ reported.
“There were multiple stories given by the defendant in this case, one of them being a possible fall down the stairs. That was refuted by the medical examiner,” Erin Wilmoth continued. “The medical examiner said there would be injuries that he would expect to see if there was a fall down the stairs of a child. None of those injuries were present in this case.”
At one point during the interview, Duperon allegedly started talking about evil spirits.
“While the questions were being asked, Duperon mumbled out loud, ‘I swear to God, this is not me. This sounds crazy, but there’s bad spirits,’” Michigan State Police Sgt. Det. Rob Walters said during Tuesday’s hearing. “Duperon stated ‘There was a lady and she came out of nowhere.’”
Toward the end of the hearing, Wilmoth reiterated that Lyla’s injuries were “unfathomable.”
“What she endured is unfathomable. The pictures reflect a child that does not even look like a child. The massive amount of swelling to her head and her face, she was completely unrecognizable,” Wilmoth said.
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