GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) - A Gulfport man has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for abusing a 2-year-old girl while he was her caregiver.
Circuit Judge Larry Bourgeois sentenced Daniel Wayne Byers on Thursday after a Harrison County jury found him guilty on two counts of felony child abuse.
District Attorney Joel Smith tells The Sun Herald the jury in the three-day trial deliberated less than two hours before reaching its verdicts.
Smith said Byers had taken the girl to Garden Park Medical Center on Sept. 4, 2011, because she was in severe pain. The girl was diagnosed with a fractured femur and had bruises and scrapes on her head, neck, chest and back side of her body.
Smith said Byers told authorities the child had fallen out of her bed.
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