An Alabama woman has admitted to bashing her 4-year-old nephew to death with a broom — after she initially blamed the tot’s savage beating on the child’s 9-year-old sister.
Yolanda Coale, 55, pleaded guilty Monday to reckless manslaughter in the killing of the boy, King Lyons, who was found dead at his aunt’s home in Mobile in February 2022.
Before his death, the boy was said to have suffered horrific abuse, including being slapped and hit with a belt and a backscratcher, and compelled to drink water out of the toilet.
At first, King’s 9-year-old sister was arrested and charged with assault, after Coale claimed that the grade-schooler fatally struck her baby brother during a fight.
The young girl denied harming King, and the Mobile County District Attorney’s Office later dropped the charges against her, according to Fox 10 TV.
Coale was the toddler’s legal guardian.
On the morning of Feb. 3, 2022, police officers were called to the woman’s home on Jacob Drive and found the boy’s lifeless body covered in cuts and bruises in various stages of healing, suggesting prolonged abuse, according to a detective’s testimony during a preliminary hearing last year.
The boy, whose face was covered with a towel, had cuts on his nose and lips, bruising under both eyes, old scars on his back and dried blood on his buttocks, the station WPMI previously reported.
Children living in the neighborhood told police that they saw Coale hit her nephew on multiple occasions, prompting their mom to stop letting them go to the woman’s house, reported the station WKRG.
One of the young witnesses said they also saw the woman strip the 4-year-old King naked and whip him with a diamond-studded belt.
In one instance, Coale allegedly denied her nephew water because of his bathroom accidents and laughed at him when she saw the tot drinking from the toilet, saying, “That’s what he gets,” the neighborhood kids claimed.
Coale allegedly used a broom, a backscratcher and an electric cord to strike King — and she also kept a “lock-up” room in her home where children were confined as punishment for bad behavior.
Coale was previously arrested for felony murder, but on the eve of her trial, she accepted a plea deal, which saw the charge against her downgraded to manslaughter carrying a sentence of two to 20 years in prison.
The 55-year-old is expected to be sentenced on Feb. 15. Until then, a judge has allowed her to remain free on bond.