The Laramie Boomerang Via Wyoming News Exchange
LARAMIE (WNE) — Prosecutors dropped a murder charge last week against 24-year-old Artem Day, who was accused of fatally bludgeoning his 22-year-old fiancee in March 2018.
Day’s case was scheduled to go to trial on Monday, but prosecutor Ben Harwich said in a court filing that “further investigation” is needed.
After what the Laramie Police Department described as a “lengthy and intensive investigation,” Day was charged with second-degree murder in August 2019.
The delay in charging Day largely stemmed from the bizarre and convoluted circumstances of his fiancee’s death.
When Laramie police responded to the couple’s home on March 11, 2018, it initially appeared that Day’s fiancee was suffering from alcohol poisoning, as Day suggested.
However, the autopsy found no alcohol or other drugs in her bloodstream.
Instead, a medical investigator discovered wounds that suggested she had been beaten so severely that her body was inundated with fatal levels of lactic acid.
Court documents did not name the victim, opting instead to use the victim’s initials, S.R. — a practice that’s customary in cases that involve a sexual assault charge, as this case does.
When S.R. was brought to Ivinson Memorial Hospital, an examination revealed two bruises on her back, a bruise on her forearm, a bruise on her right shoulder, a bruise on her right thigh, two bruises on her right hip and one bruise on her tricep.
After searching the couple’s residence, police found a “breaker-bar-type tool” that matched the linear bruises on S.R.’s body.
