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Who is Wyatt Dean Lamb? Wyoming man kills boy, 2, with blowtorch and throws body in dumpster

Wyatt Dean Lamb of Wyoming tortured and killed his girlfriend's toddler son Athian Rivera with a blowtorch and then reported him missing

CHEYENNE, WYOMING: In a shocking incident, a Wyoming man was accused of brutally murdering his girlfriend's 2-year-old boy and dumping his body in a dumpster after allegedly setting fire to it with a blowtorch, news outlets reported on Tuesday, June 29.

The incident is reminiscent of an earlier horrific attack when a man wearing a werewolf mask burned a 2-year-old girl with a blowtorch and tased her while she was sleeping. The accused later killed himself. Another Wyoming child had a part of his skull removed after being brutally beaten by his father and stepmother. In another case, two New Jersey dogs, including a three-month-old pit bull, were ruthlessly burned with blowtorch. 

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The accusations against Wyatt Dean Lamb were revealed late on Monday, June 28, by the Laramie County District Attorney's office, four months after 2-year-old Athian Rivera's body was discovered wrapped in a sheet and packed in rubbish bags in a Cheyenne dumpster.

Who is Wyatt Dean Lamb?

Lamb is a resident of Cheyenne in Wyoming. He told police that he lived in the 2500 block of Deming Drive with a roommate, but police confirmed that although he had earlier lived at the Deming Drive apartment, he had moved out around August 2020, according to Wyoming News. Lamb was the boyfriend of Kassandra Orona, the mother of Rivera. Orona claimed that she shared an apartment with Athian and her two other small children and that Lamb had joined them in August 2020.

Lamb has been in prison since February when he was arrested for breaking bond conditions in a different case. After being charged with felony strangulation of a family member, misdemeanor property destruction and interference with a peace officer after an incident involving Orona, he was reportedly barred from being near Orona or being within one block of her home. He is currently awaiting trial in that case.

What did Wyatt Dean Lamb do?

Rivera's final moments are described in detail in a nine-page probable cause document from the Cheyenne Police Department. According to the complaint, Athian's mother reported her son missing around 1 pm on February 19. The child's body was found in a dumpster at the apartment complex where Orona and her children lived. His body was warm, the Daily Beast reported. Lamb seemed to have tied knots on the trash bags Athian was found in, according to DNA testing and fingerprints.

The child died between 11 am and 1 pm on that day, according to an autopsy, when Lamb was obviously trying to avoid Orona from seeing her son, as she later told the police. She had worked the night shift and had entrusted her children to Lamb. The cause of Athian's death is unknown, but an autopsy report by the Laramie County medical examiner detailed nothing short of torture, adding that the toddler had “scattered blunt force injuries over much of the body”, along with contusions and abrasion. Investigators said the burn wounds on his genital area and upper legs were consistent with a blowtorch found in the couple's apartment.

According to the affidavit, Lamb, who was the one who first reported the boy missing to Orona, was said to be acting "strange" when many people searched the building for the boy. One witness told the police that the boy's absence did not make him "worried or flustered". Lamb is currently being held in the Laramie County jail on a $1M bond, and if convicted of the first-degree murder accusation against him, he could face the death penalty. He faces 10 counts of child abuse in addition to the murder charge.