Adriana Lytle sentenced to 62 years

Adriana Lytle received a 62.5-year sentence today for her part in the death of her stepdaughter, 4-year-old Summer Phelps. Lytle, 34, pleaded guilty last year to homicide by abuse with aggravated circumstances in Summer’s death, admitting she played a part in the six-month cycle of severe abuse that led to the child’s death. Prosecutors wanted her sent away for 75 years – the same sentence her husband, Jonathan Lytle, received Thursday from Superior Court Judge Michael Price. Over six months in 2006 and 2007, Summer Phelps was beaten, bitten, shocked with a dog collar, burned with cigarettes, denied food and dunked in cold water after being forced to stand in a bathtub for hours washing urine-soaked clothes. Her red hair was pulled out in clumps, and her body was covered from head to toe with bruises. She died March 10, 2007, submerged in the family bathtub. Emergency room doctors and nurses who treated her testified during Lytle’s trial that it was the worst case of child abuse they’d seen.