Attack on ex-wife draws minimum of 10 years in prison for LV man

Bill Gang

Thursday, Nov. 18, 1999 | 10:06 a.m.

The state Parole and Probation Department had recommended a six-year prison sentence for a man convicted by a jury of trying to stab and strangle his former wife while two of their children tried to intercede.

Deputy District Attorney Abbi Silver argued Wednesday that Darryl Lloyd White deserved to be behind bars for a minimum of eight years because of his history of domestic violence.

White spoke in his own defense in hopes of eliciting leniency, but the result was that he talked his way into a 10-year minimum sentence from District Judge Michael Douglas.

"I was just choking my wife while we were going down the stairs," White explained to the judge. "If that's attempted murder then I deserve a million years."

Douglas then asked the 41-year-old defendant, "Do you realize you just admitted to attempted murder?" White previously had always maintained his innocence .

While 10 years is the minimum White must serve before becoming eligible for parole, he could serve as much as 24 years under Wednesday's sentence.

The incident that resulted in his jury conviction occurred on the night of Feb. 2, 1998, when Joya Shelton returned to the home where White was baby-sitting their four children, ranging in age from 1 to 10.

Silver said the couple already had divorced because of the violence that occurred when White was drinking, but he still played a role in the family and occasionally watched the children.

After Shelton returned home, White demanded alcohol and when he was refused, he became violent, the prosecutor said.

Shelton was thrown against a wall with such force that the two older children, ages 8 and 10, were awakened and began screaming for the fighting to stop. The 8-year-old boy kicked his father as the 10-year-old girl got between their parents, according to trial testimony.

White grabbed a knife and attempted to stab the woman, but the girl kicked the knife from her father's hand.

Shelton told the jury that she and White tumbled down some stairs while he choked her into near unconsciousness.

"It's fortuitous that he didn't kill her," Silver said, noting that there had been "years of abuse for this lady."

The melee attracted the attention of neighbors, who called 911 and then pulled White away from the woman, Silver said.

The prosecutor noted that two years before the final confrontation White had kicked his then-pregnant wife in the stomach so hard that it left blood around the fetus.

"Even when that child was a fetus, it experienced domestic violence," Silver said.

White fled the strangulation scene before police arrived but was arrested a few hours later.

Those Metro Police officers, however, only booked White on misdemeanor domestic battery charges although he had been arrested and convicted on such charges before.

Silver said that when the case reached the district attorney's office, the charges were elevated to felony attempted murder counts. A charge of child abuse also was added because White had shoved his eldest daughter against a wall during the altercation.