Lytle tape played at court hearing

In the last months of her life, 4-year-old Summer Phelps had no protectors.

She was slapped, beaten with belts, shocked with a dog collar hung around her neck to keep her from screaming. She was forced for hours to wash her urine-soaked bedding in the bathroom where she slept.

A lengthy videotaped statement from her father, welder Jonathan Lytle, played in court Thursday offers his version of the girl’s life after her mother, Elizabeth Phelps, let her come to Spokane for a visit in August 2006 and never retrieved her.

Lytle also gives his version of the night the girl died. His wife and Summer’s stepmother, Adriana Lytle, killed the girl alone, he says in the tape, made under police questioning.

Played during an evidence hearing in Spokane County Superior Court, the tape was recorded at 8:53 a.m. March 11, 2007, hours after Summer’s death at Deaconess Medical Center. The jury will hear the tape during Lytle’s trial on charges of homicide by abuse, which starts Monday.

On the tape, Lytle tells of a resentful stepmother who beat the child while taking good care of her own infant son. He says his wife bit Summer and shoved her underwater in a bathtub on the night she died. Adriana Lytle has pleaded guilty to charges of homicide by abuse and will be sentenced after her husband’s trial.

Lytle also tells the detectives he worried about outsiders seeing Summer’s bruises but admits he hit her with a belt, purchased the dog collar used to shock her and on one occasion bit her. He also describes the abrupt end of Summer’s life near midnight March 10, 2007, in the emergency room at Deaconess Medical Center.

Adriana Lytle was the “primary discipliner” in the family, Lytle said. By early 2007 Summer had bruises all over her body and he felt his wife’s discipline had gone too far, Lytle told Spokane police Detective Brian Hamond.

“Adriana was trying to get her to mind – she wouldn’t. It was a full-scale battle between the two,” he said.

On the night Summer died, a Saturday, she was forced to wash clothes for hours with no dinner. As she worked, Lytle said, he watched TV and scanned cartoons into his computer.

“I told Adriana, ‘Don’t hit her. I’m tired of seeing my daughter with all those marks.’ Adriana said, ‘Fine, if she doesn’t want to do her job, I’ll just dunk her.’ I said, you can’t drown her – you just can’t do that.”

When Adriana called him into the bathroom to “save your daughter’s life,” Summer was on the floor with her eyes half-open, and Adriana was preparing to give her CPR, he said.

“I thought it was a game and I didn’t want myself to get wrapped up in it. I just walked away,” Lytle told the detective.

He went to the kitchen and smoked a cigarette. When he returned to the bathroom, “I found out it wasn’t a game after all,” he said. When Lytle could no longer detect Summer’s heartbeat, he said, he grabbed her and rushed to Deaconess. It was too late.

Also Thursday, Spokane police detectives testified about their questioning of Lytle in the early hours of March 11, 2007.

Under questioning from Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor Jack Driscoll, Cpl. Rob Dashiell said he was at Deaconess on the night of March 10 working on a DUI case when a man carried a limp child with wet hair into the emergency room.

Dashiell was notified by hospital officials that she could be a child abuse victim.

Dashiell was the first officer to question Lytle, who he said was calm and began to talk rapidly about Summer. Lytle said the child had been “disruptive,” had hit her head on the bathroom sink and had pulled out large chunks of her hair.

One minute after midnight, when Lytle was told his daughter was dead, “I saw no emotion from him at all,” Dashiell said.

“He asked me, ‘Is she really dead?’ and ‘Is she dead or alive?’ … He started to act like he was going to cry, but there were no tears,” Dashiell added.

Sgt. Charles Reynolds said Lytle paced the room where he was waiting for news about Summer and said, “I guess I’m going to prison. I didn’t really do anything, I just drove her here.”

Hamond said he and Detective Mark Burbridge asked Lytle if he’d come with them to the Public Safety Building for an interview, and Lytle agreed.

At the same time, Detective Theresa Ferguson was interviewing Adriana Lytle.

In a second interview with Jonathan Lytle, at 4:04 a.m., he said his wife was Summer’s main disciplinarian.

“I asked him if he’d seen Adriana go too far that day – and he replied, ‘Every day,’ ” Hamond said. But Lytle also told the detectives that he routinely spanked Summer.

On the day of her death, Lytle took Summer on a car trip to Cheney to avoid a visit from a nurse checking on the welfare of the couple’s infant son. Summer had no food that day and was kept in the bathroom from 12:30 to 10 p.m. as the adults ordered take-out chicken, Burbridge testified.

Ferguson asked Lytle what he believed happened in the bathroom that night.

“I believe Summer was sitting in the tub, and I believe Adriana dunked her and drowned her,” Lytle told the detectives.