In order to “ease her suffering,” a 46-year-old Utah man acknowledged that he had attempted to kill his wife, who was receiving hospice care due to breast cancer.
DeWayne McCulla admitted this week to trying to commit manslaughter after strangling his wife Arenda Lee McCulla, 47, who passed away on December 21, 2021, from cancer. In 2020, Arenda McCulla received a breast cancer diagnosis.
Her son stated on a GoFundMe website that the cancer was thought to be deadly by October 2021 after spreading to her neck, brain, lungs, and liver. Then, at her home in La Verkin, a tiny village in southwest Utah, she was put under hospice care.
In a probable cause arrest affidavit, police stated that DeWayne McCulla started choking her “in an attempt to kill her to ease her suffering” while she was seated with her son and other family members the night before she passed away.
Family members dragged him off her as she was “gasping for air,” the affidavit alleged. The following day, she passed away.
When the victim’s adult son filed a complaint, accusing his mother’s spouse of placing his hands around her neck, the La Verkin Police Department launched an investigation.
Family members verified his account to detectives. Her husband confessed to choking her over the phone with police.
“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 stated. “DeWayne said he would do this again because he loved his wife.”
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In December, DeWayne McCulla was first charged by prosecutors with attempted murder, a first-degree crime carrying a maximum life sentence. He entered a guilty plea to attempted manslaughter, and when he is sentenced in December, he could spend up to 15 years behind bars.
The son of Arenda McCulla expressed his disapproval of the plea agreement to Salt Lake City NBC affiliate KSL, stating that he intends to address the court during the sentencing hearing.
