Woman walks 37 miles in snow to escape boyfriend torturing her for hours, feds say
A South Dakota man was sentenced to prison after officials say he beat and tortured his girlfriend for hours.
McClatchy News is not naming the man in order to protect the identity of the woman.
According to court documents, the 41-year-old man was living in Little Eagle with his girlfriend and their 1-year-old daughter.
On the night of Nov. 21, 2022, the man did drugs and got drunk, according to an Aug. 21 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Dakota. The next morning, around 7:30, he woke up and assaulted his girlfriend, officials said.
The man “dragged her by the hair across the floor, then choked her for 30 seconds, telling her she would die ‘today’ and that no one wanted her,” officials said.
He then threw her over a couch and made her kneel before him in a “degrading manner” before hitting her with his fists, according to officials.
“If his girlfriend whimpered, (he) threatened to throw her down the stairs and chain her in the basement. This torture continued for two hours,” officials said.
He also told the woman he would “bury her with another woman,” officials said.
After the assault, the man fell asleep and the woman ran from the home. She then walked 37 miles through snow to her mother’s home in Fort Yates, North Dakota, officials said.
The woman reported the assault to police and showed them injuries to her face, head, neck and a stab wound on her hand, according to a criminal complaint.
When the woman spoke with investigators on Nov. 25, she told them she did not know why the man assaulted her and that when she returned home the day of the assault to get her daughter, he threatened her with a box cutter, according to court documents.
When the man was interviewed by police, he denied assaulting the woman and said they only got into a verbal argument, the complaint said.
McClatchy News reached out to the man’s attorney for comment Aug. 22 but did not immediately hear back.
In May, the man pleaded guilty to assault of an intimate partner by strangulation and suffocation. He was sentenced on Aug. 19 to four years in prison.
This story was originally published August 22, 2024 at 1:06 PM with the headline "Woman walks 37 miles in snow to escape boyfriend torturing her for hours, feds say."
