John Jefferson
DeWayne and Arenda McCulla (McMillan Mortuary).
A 46-year-old Utah man admitted to trying to kill his wife who was in hospice care dying from breast cancer so he could “ease her suffering.”
DeWayne McCulla last week pleaded guilty to attempted manslaughter for choking his wife, 47-year-old Arenda Lee McCulla, who died of cancer on Dec. 21, 2021. Arenda McCulla was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020. By October of 2021 the cancer had spread to her neck, brain, lungs and liver and was considered terminal, her son wrote in a GoFundMe page. She was then placed in hospice care at her home in La Verkin, a small town in southwest Utah.
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DeWayne McCulla, her son and other family members were sitting by her side the night before her death when he began choking her “in an attempt to kill her to ease her suffering,” cops wrote in a probable cause arrest affidavit obtained by Law&Crime. Family members pulled him off her as she was “gasping for air,” the affidavit said. She died the next day.
The La Verkin Police Department began investigating when the victim’s adult son filed a complaint accusing his mother’s husband of putting his hands around her neck. Family members confirmed his account to investigators. In a phone conversation with cops, her husband admitted to choking her.
“He said he put his face up against hers and put his one hand around her neck next to her carotid artery and pushed just hard enough to help her suffering and make her pass away quicker,” detectives wrote. “DeWayne said he would do this again because he loved his wife.”
Prosecutors originally charged DeWayne McCulla with attempted murder, a first-degree felony punishable up to life behind bars, in December. He pleaded down to attempted manslaughter and faces up to 15 years in prison when he is sentenced in December.
Arenda McCulla’s son told Salt Lake City NBC affiliate KSL that he was opposed to the plea deal and plans to address the court during the sentencing hearing.
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