Father In Fatal Child Beating Upset Over Sentence

A former Garfield County man sentenced to prison for beating his four-and-a-half-month-old daughter is upset that he was given jail time.

According to a deputy district attorney, Harley Quint Young told her, "We're one of the better American families. We don't beat our kids and we don't do drugs in front of them."

Gretchen Larson also said that Young told her the whole thing "sucks," according to a report in the Glenwood Springs Post Independent.

Young, 22, was sentenced Jan. 13 to 30 years in prison for the fatal beating of Alecsandria Young-Schmid on Feb. 17, 2002.

"He jerked her violently out of her swing and slammed her two times against the ground," said Larson. "(The infant) cried some more, and he took his hand and covered her mouth and nose and suffocated her for 20 to 30 seconds. Then, realizing what he was doing, he jerked his hand away. ... He wrapped her in a blanket and put her in her crib and left her there to die."

Glenwood Springs District Court Judge Peter Craven had harsh words for Young just before sentencing, and quoted Abraham Lincoln in his comments.

"'A society is judged not by how it treats its greatest but how it treats its least' ... It's difficult to conceive how that protection was ripped away and replaced with violence against a child," Craven said.

Young told investigators in a videotaped confession that he was in a bad mood when he came home from work the evening his daughter was killed.

Young and his wife Micah Marie Schmid-Young, 21, were arrested in New Mexico in March, 2004, after a two-year investigation. Schmid-Young is charged with child abuse resulting in serious bodily injury, knowingly or recklessly; and child abuse resulting in serious bodily injury. She is awaiting trial.

Young pleaded guilty in a plea agreement to child abuse resulting in serious bodily injury, knowingly or recklessly. He could have been sentenced to a maximum 48 years in prison on the charge. He faced a maximum sentenced of life in prison without the plea agreement.

In pronouncing his sentence, Craven noted the prior convictions of Young, primarily drug charges, dating back to age 14.