For the third time, a Lafayette Parish grand jury has handed up an indictment against a local man in connection with the 2022 death of a one-year-old child.
In 2022 and again in 2023, a grand jury handed up indictments against Dillon Wayne Cormier, 32, in connection with the September 2022 death of the child.
In December 2022, the grand jury indicted him on charges of second-degree murder of a child and second-degree cruelty to a juvenile. In April 2023, they changed the second-degree murder charge to that of first-degree murder.
This week, they added a charge of first-degree rape of the child to the indictment against him. Court records indicate that, last fall, the state Department of Children and Family Services submitted records to the court in the case. At first there were discrepancies in the copies produced, but after the investigators re-copied the records they were admitted under seal. The court ordered Cormier's attorney not to give them to Cormier.
The next court date is a pretrial hearing set for July.
A woman, Deziree Suttoon, 26, also was indicted on the first-degree murder charge, and on the cruelty charge. She's not named in this week's indictment. Her next hearing also is a pretrial hearing in July.
At the time of the child's death, deputies told KATC that they went to the 100 block of Willie Mae Lane on September 17 and found an unresponsive child. The baby was transported to a local hospital, where the child later died.
