Iowa man pleads guilty in 4-year-old’s death in Indiana

LAGRANGE, Ind. (WHBF) — An Eldridge, Iowa, man accused within the demise of a 4-year-old boy in Indiana has pleaded responsible to a cost of neglect of a dependent leading to demise, a Degree 1 felony.

Dylan Andrew Diericx can be formally sentenced on June 24 in LaGrange County Court docket, in accordance with his bail bond agent, on Monday evening.

The bail bond agent, who requested that her identify not be used, stated the prosecutor and the protection legal professional agreed Monday to 32 years for the cost, which carries the potential of a 40-year sentence.

Diericx, who has been out on bond since final yr, continues to work as a truck driver, the agent stated.

“My job is to maintain observe of him whereas he’s free,” the agent stated. “He contacts me each single day.” A Degree 1 felony ‘is the best felony you may get,” she stated.

The incident and expenses

Our sister station, WANE reported final yr the LaGrange County Prosecutor’s Workplace filed preliminary expenses in opposition to Diericx, alleging one rely of neglect of a dependent leading to demise, a Degree 1 felony.

It was Aug. 19, 2021, when Shipshewana Police had been referred to as to 345 Van Buren St. for a younger boy unresponsive and in vital situation. He was taken by helicopter to a Fort Wayne hospital, the place he in the end died.

The prosecutor’s workplace launched a short assertion on the arrest. In line with a possible trigger affidavit, the boy was the son of Diericx’s girlfriend, and Diericx stated they had been engaged in “horse-play” within the cab of a semi when the kid was injured.

Diericx informed investigators that he had tossed the boy on the bunk within the sleeper of his semi, and the kid hit his head on a “mounted object,” the affidavit stated. The boy then started convulsing and went unconscious, Diericx stated, in accordance with the affidavit.

In line with the affidavit, the boy’s accidents weren’t in line with that rationalization. The kid suffered “fractures to his clavicle and shoulder blade, bruises and abrasions on the fitting and left facet of his face, bruises on his brow, laceration and blunt drive trauma to the again of the pinnacle, bruises to genitalia, damage and bleeding from the sufferer’s anus, cuts to his arm, a busted lip and burns round his mouth and on numerous elements of his physique,” the affidavit stated.

A Degree 1 felony in Indiana is usually punishable by 20 to 40 years in jail and a superb of as much as $10,000.