A 30-year-old mother has been sentenced to 40 years behind bars for beating her 2-year-old son to death with a studded belt after he wet the bed and gave her “side eye”.
Katrina Shangreaux, from South Dakota, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder as part of a plea deal in March, after initially pleading not guilty to first-degree murder, and was handed down her sentence on Tuesday.
The mother-of-five admitted to beating her son Kylen Tyrone Shangreaux with a studded belt, throwing him to the ground, and hitting him in the stomach and head in a rage when she came home on July 28, 2016, and found the little boy had wet the bed. She told the court in her confession she had been drinking heavily and was on pain medications before the attack.
In her written statement she said she became even angrier after the boy “gave her a sideways look” and referred to her as “Angie” – his paternal aunt Angie Shangreaux, who had custody of him until a tribal court gave him back to his birth mother weeks before his death.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Collins told the court during sentencing Shangreaux’s brutal beating had left the two-year-old boy with bleeding on his brain, cigarette burns on his head and horrifically mutilated genitals.
After his death, Katrina and her mother, Sonya Dubray, cleaned blood and feces off Kylen, and cleaned up the scene. When she finally called 911, she told the dispatcher her son had choked on apple juice.
Kylen’s father is serving time in federal prison for abuse and neglect of a son with a different woman.
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