But Inserra says police “still have not concluded why the session turned so violent”.
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Throughout the night and into the next morning, Inserra has said, Leonard’s parents punched, kicked and whipped Leonard and his 17-year-old brother, Christopher Leonard, with help from other parishioners “in hopes that each would confess to prior sins and ask for forgiveness”. Irwin said it started after church on Sunday at about 8pm and lasted through Monday at 10am when they noticed Lucas wasn’t breathing.
Police deployed tactical teams to the church, and discovered the younger brother, Christopher Leonard, on the second floor of the three-story red brick building, a former public schoolhouse.
Their parents, Bruce Leonard, 65, and Deborah Leonard, 59, from Clayville, were charged with first-degree manslaughter, police said. Four other adults were charged with assault in the younger brother’s beating, including Sarah Ferguson, 33, the victims’ sister.
“I anticipate, when we go to the grand jury, we will ask the grand jury to consider these charges and other charges against these individuals and other individuals”, McNamara stated. Ferguson and Irwin are scheduled to appear in court again next Friday. They too have pleaded not guilty.
Mark DiOrio/AP Bruce Leornard and Deborah Leonard enter the courtroom of before their arraignment on Tuesday.
On Friday, details began to leak out.
He said his sister, Pastor Tiffanie Irwin, hosted the session involving the Leonard family.
Devoted to their spiritual leader and pastor, members often “wait to be told what to do”, Inserra said. “They are at this point the true victims”, he said. “You always hear dogs, they’re breeding dogs”.
The police chief said the congregants so firmly kept to themselves that when a fire broke out a few years ago, they extinguished it themselves and didn’t want to let in firefighters.
To a few local residents, it was a strangely secretive place: a church where the doors weren’t open, dogs barked, people were rarely seen coming and going, and members were loath to let even firefighters in. “We put up the hedges”.
Over time, there was friction between the church and a neighboring community, she said.
“In the state of New York he is charged with manslaughter in the first degree, which requires intent to cause serious bodily injury and I do not believe there was any intent”, Gerace said this week. But, he said, an investigation had not yet shown that to be true.
Around 10 a.m. Monday, panicked church members ran up to Irwin and said they thought Lucas was dead.
Deborah Leonard’s lawyer said the mother felt helpless to stop an “intervention” she didn’t expect to become so harsh. The investigator said Deborah Leonard admitted that she hit Lucas with a cord and that her husband hit him as well.
Additional charges and arrests were pending, police said.
Irwin described brutal beatings during the counseling session by Lucas’ father Bruce Leonard.
He also witnessed Bruce giving Lucas CPR for about 10 minutes before bringing him to the hospital where he was pronounced dead and says no one ever called 911. He remained hospitalised yesterday and was cooperating with the authorities.
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Inserra said that all the sect’s children had been questioned at length and that there was “absolutely no indication of any sexual abuse” to any of the children.
