Man sentenced to prison for murdering infant

COEUR d’ALENE — A man who pleaded guilty to killing his 2-month-old daughter will spend decades in prison.

Dylan D. Towles, 24, of Spirit Lake, pleaded guilty in November 2023 to second-degree murder.

First District Judge Barbara Duggan sentenced Towles on Tuesday to 50 years in prison with parole eligibility after 30 years.

The charge stems from September 2021, when prosecutors said Towles called 911 and told dispatchers his daughter wasn’t breathing. When first responders arrived, they found the child unresponsive on the floor and observed bruises and bite marks on her body, according to a news release from the Kootenai County Prosecutor’s Office.

The child died as a result of a head injury, prosecutors said.

Towles reportedly told authorities he bit the child, shook her “violently” and “played with her legs” in an attempt to elicit a response from her after she suddenly became unresponsive.

An autopsy reportedly showed “blunt force injuries” on the child’s head, neck, torso and limbs. Some fractures were determined to be recent injuries, while others were old and already healed or in the process of healing.

The child had also sustained a spinal cord injury, as well as a brain hemorrhage and subsequent brain swelling. Prosecutors said the child tested positive for COVID-19, however, which “confounded” the ability of the Spokane County Medical Examiner’s Office to determine the exact cause of the hemorrhage.

Last July, a grand jury indicted Towles on charges of first-degree murder and injury to a child, both felonies. He later pleaded guilty to the amended charge of second-degree murder, a crime punishable by up to life in prison.

After his arrest, prosecutors said Towles initially repeated his original story to detectives. But he “eventually broke down and admitted to shaking his infant child out of frustration because she would not eat and would not stop crying,” according to the prosecutor’s office.

Towles pleaded guilty in 2019 to felony injury to a child, related to a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl. He received a withheld judgment in the case and was placed on felony probation for three years.