A Jefferson County jury found Lysander Harvey — who admitted “boxing” with and “whooping” his girlfriend’s 3-year-old son — guilty Wednesday of first-degree murder in the child’s death.
Elijah Carpenter never woke up after his mother, Kristine Carpenter, also convicted in the boy’s death, .
Doctors found bleeding in the child’s brain, a healing injury to his spleen, rib fractures and burn marks on his buttocks.
After a week of testimony, jurors deliberated for just over a day before returning their guilty verdict.
Harvey, 22, was immediately sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, a mandatory punishment for first-degree murder of a child by a person in a position of trust.
Jurors heard from Elijah’s sister, who was 5 at the time of his death.
She testified that she was made to stand in the corner of the family’s room at Lakewood’s Mesa Motor Inn holding a phone book as punishment while Harvey beat her brother.
Harvey struck the toddler with a belt and punched him repeatedly in the chest, she said. “He was crying,” the girl said of her little brother.
Harvey was punishing Elijah for a potty-training accident, according to prosecutors.
Not wanting to witness the beating, Kristine Carpenter left the motel room. She sent texts to Harvey asking him to stop so authorities would not take her children away, but she did not re-enter the motel room to stop the beating.
Carpenter was sentenced in February to 19 years in prison following her conviction for child abuse resulting in death.
Jurors heard that later, when Elijah would not wake up, the couple put him in the shower and ran alternating hot and cold water over him.
Carpenter, at the time an employee of St. Anthony Hospital, took the boy to the emergency room there. Doctors discovered the child’s heart had stopped. They revived him, but he never regained brain activity.
Harvey originally told police the boy had fallen down the stairs.
He later admitted he boxed with the child to “toughen him up.”
Jessica Fender: 303-954-1244 or jfender@denverpost.com
