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Kootenai County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office
A 24-year-old father in Idaho will spend decades behind bars after he admitted to killing his newborn daughter, “violently” beating and shaking the infant to death in 2021. Kootenai County District Judge Barbara Duggan on Tuesday ordered Dyllan Dwight Towles to serve a sentence of 50 years in a state correctional facility for slaying the little girl, authorities announced.
Court records show that Towles last year pleaded guilty to one lesser count of second-degree murder in his daughter’s death. He will be eligible for parole after serving at least 25 years of his sentence.
According to a news release from the Kootenai County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, Towles on Saturday, Sept. 18, 2021, called 911 and told the dispatcher his 2-month-old child was not breathing. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders found the child “laying face up and unresponsive on the floor.”
While attempting lifesaving measures, officers said they observed visible injuries on the child, which included” a large circular bruise on her cheek, a bruise on her right leg, and bite marks on her left forearm, left ankle, and below her knee.”
The victim was rushed to the hospital where she was pronounced dead.
In response to questions about the events leading up to him calling 911, Towles said on Thursday everything was normal. On Friday his daughter slept excessively and on Saturday morning everything seemed fine. But later on Saturday, the victim began “to look off to the side and not respond when he (Towles) snapped his fingers,” the release states.
“When asked about the observed injuries, Towles claimed that he bit the child, ‘shook’ her ‘pretty violently’ approximately 20 times, and ‘played with her legs’ in an attempt to gain a response from the child after she suddenly became unresponsive,” prosecutors wrote.
“An autopsy of the child conducted by the Spokane County Medical Examiner’s Office determined that there were blunt force injuries on the child’s head, neck, torso, and extremities,” officials said. “Specifically, fractures were found on the child’s rib, arm, shoulder, and both of her femurs. A spinal cord injury was also found on the child in addition to bleeding and swelling of the brain.”
Authorities said the injuries were in different states of healing — a telltale sign of prolonged abuse.
Following the autopsy, prosecutors consulted with pediatric professionals and forensic pathologists from the Washington State University of Medicine and the University of Utah School of Medicine regarding the findings. The experts said the newborn’s death was “definitely due to abusive head trauma inflicted on the child,” per the release.
A grand jury subsequently returned a true bill indicting Towles on the charge of first-degree murder and he was arrested on July 6, 2023.
“Later that evening, officers from the Post Falls Police Department located Towles and arrested him on the warrant. Following the arrest, Detective Neil Uhrig (formerly of the Post Falls Police Department) interviewed Towles. At first, Towles repeated his original story to Detective Uhrig. However, Towles eventually broke down and admitted to shaking his infant child out of frustration because she would not eat and would not stop crying.”
Prosecutors said Towles in 2019 was convicted of felony injury to a child after originally being charged with statutory rape. Authorities said a then-19-year-old Towles was having a sexual contact with a 15-year-old girl. He was still on probation for this charge at the time of the murder.
