Burnsville Man Arrested for Beating Child with Belt

A Burnsville man was arrested Wednesday on a charge that he whipped a 10-year-old child with a belt hard enough to leave welts.

Lance Tyrone Hart, 34, faces a gross misdemeanor count of malicious punishment of a child, which carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $3,000 fine.

The charge was initially filed late last year, but after Hart missed a June 29 hearing, a warrant for his arrest was issued. He was arrested Wednesday morning in Hastings.

According to the criminal complaint, a Burnsville police detective and a Dakota County social worker took photographs last Dec. 17 of “multiple swollen linear welts” on a 10-year-old child’s arms, legs and back.

The child told authorities that she had not completed her homework, and Hart hit her repeatedly with a belt.

Police arrested Hart, and he admitted that he had hit the child with the belt six or eight times, according to the complaint.

When police showed Hart photographs of the child’s injuries, he began to cry, and said, “I didn’t think I hit her that hard,” the complaint says.

Hart remained in the Dakota County Jail in Hastings on Wednesday.