Jurors convicted Latarius Mylik Dale after prosecutors said he broke into Brittany Moulton’s home and beat her with a hammer.
HOUSTON COUNTY, Ala. — Brittany Moulton sat in court as Latarius Mylik Dale, her former boyfriend and the father of a child they shared, was sentenced to life in prison for a hammer attack that nearly killed her in February 2025.
The sentencing on May 21 followed a guilty verdict on a first-degree domestic violence charge. The case turned on what prosecutors described as a violent break-in at Moulton’s home in Lovetown after she ended the relationship and blocked Dale from contacting her. The punishment includes the possibility of parole, but it still places Dale in state prison after a case that left Moulton with a metal plate in her head and blindness in one eye.
For Moulton, the court hearing came after months of medical treatment, public interviews and the strain of seeing the case move through the criminal system. She had told WTVY before the verdict that the attack left her unable to file her own protection order because of the injuries. At sentencing, local reports said she became emotional as the judge announced Dale’s punishment. Moulton said later that she felt justice had been served, a statement that marked a sharp turn from the night she was found unconscious in a neighbor’s yard.
Moulton’s account of the attack begins with a sound inside her home. She said she heard two footsteps, then saw a figure dressed in black. She had gone to bed after coming home that night, she said, and then realized someone had entered. Prosecutors said the intruder was Dale. Moulton said she remembered being hit, yelling no and then being struck again before she blacked out. Investigators said the weapon was a hammer and that the blows landed repeatedly on her head, face and chest.
When Moulton regained consciousness, the attack had left her badly wounded and alone. She later said she believed she needed to get outside. She walked to a neighbor’s yard and knocked, but no one answered. She then collapsed in the yard. By the next morning, she was found and rushed for emergency care. A medical aircraft took her to UAB Hospital in Birmingham, where she spent 14 days. Doctors treated head trauma, deep cuts and damage to her right eye. The physical results of the attack became one of the clearest pieces of evidence in the case. Moulton has said she was sewn from ear to ear and that the top of her head is full of scars. She also said her right retina was torn, causing blindness in that eye. Local coverage showed Moulton discussing the metal plate inside her head. Prosecutors used the facts of the injuries to show the scale of the assault. The defense outcome, a conviction, showed jurors accepted the state’s case that Dale was responsible.
The relationship history gave the case a longer timeline than one night in February. Moulton said she and Dale had been together before the attack and had a child together. A 2023 case had brought Dale into court on a third-degree domestic violence charge, but Moulton later asked for that case to be dropped. She said she told the judge they were raising children and that she thought the relationship could improve. By November 2024, she said, that hope had ended. She left and said she was not returning.
After the final breakup, Moulton blocked Dale. She said the blocked contact mattered because he no longer knew where she was or what she was doing. In her telling, Dale had lost the control he wanted over her life. That point became part of the public story after the verdict, when Moulton described the breakup, the blocked contact and Dale’s reaction. Prosecutors did not have to prove motive in the public account, but the sequence helped explain why the attack came months after the relationship ended.
The court result was severe. Judge Steensland sentenced Dale to life in prison despite local reporting that he had no prior felony convictions. First-degree domestic violence is among the most serious domestic violence offenses in Alabama, and the charge fit the state’s description of a weapon attack that caused grave injury. The sentence with possible parole means Dale may one day seek release through the parole system, but no public report listed an immediate date for such a review.
The case also placed Moulton in an unusual position as both witness and survivor. She spoke publicly before trial during Crime Victims’ Rights Week, then returned to the public eye after the guilty verdict. Her statements focused on survival, recovery and other victims. She said the scars from the assault did not define who she was. Those comments became part of the case’s public record in the Wiregrass area, where local stations followed the attack, medical recovery and sentencing.
As of June 21, 2026, Dale’s life sentence remains in place and Moulton’s recovery remains part of the public account. No further hearing date has been reported, and any future parole review would come through the state process.
Author note: Last updated June 21, 2026.