A Healthy 9-Month-Old Was Dropped Off at an Unlicensed Mena Daycare in the Morning. By 4 p.m. He Had Multiple Skull Fractures, and Nobody Has Ever Said How. A Polk County Jury Returned $110 Million.

On the morning of February 16, 2016 Daniel Ryals dropped his 9-month-old son off at Wendy Jo Strother's daycare in Mena, Arkansas. The daycare ran out of Strother's home and was not licensed. The boy was healthy when he arrived.

At about 4 p.m. Strother's daughter, Prairie Strother McBee, carried him into Mena Regional Health System. He had multiple skull fractures and hemorrhaging in his brain. He was airlifted to Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock, where he fell into a medical coma. He is permanently blind. The brain damage is permanent too, and he will need care for the rest of his life.

Nobody has ever explained what happened to him that afternoon. The medical evidence showed non-accidental head trauma, and on January 10, 2022 Strother pleaded no contest to one felony count of permitting child abuse. She was sentenced to five years of probation and fined $1,000. No one served a day in custody.

The family's civil complaint put it this way: "Despite the unspeakable nature of the crime, and despite Defendant Wendy Jo Strother's plea of guilty to a felony count of Permitting Abuse of a Minor, not a single person responsible served a single day in prison." It went on: "the Ryals family have never been told precisely what happened to their son on February 16, 2016."

The civil case was tried over three days in Polk County Circuit Court in Mena. The claims were negligence, fraudulent misrepresentation and battery: that Strother staffed the daycare with unqualified people, told parents it was licensed and safe when it was neither, and that one or more adults there battered the child and then delayed getting him medical care. Strother, McBee (by then Prairie Pate) and a third worker, Angela Nicole Lunsford, were the defendants.

On November 19, 2025 the jury returned $110,000,000 in compensatory damages and $40,000 in punitive damages. On the verdict form it put 80 percent of the fault on Wendy Strother and 20 percent on Prairie Pate, and none on Lunsford. It found by clear and convincing evidence that punitive damages were warranted against both Strother and Pate.

Daniel and Mandy Ryals were represented by Joseph Gates of Gates Law in Little Rock, Joshua Gillispie and Caitlin Malott of the Gillispie Law Firm in North Little Rock, and Breean "BW" Walas of the Walas Law Firm. Ernest Witt defended.

Arkansas cannot reduce the number by statute. Article 5, Section 32 of the state constitution forbids the legislature from capping damages, and the Arkansas Supreme Court struck down the statutory punitive cap in Bayer CropScience v. Schafer in 2011. What the state does have is several liability: under Ark. Code Ann. 16-55-201, each defendant is generally answerable only for her own share of the fault, which is why the jury's 80/20 split matters.

"No verdict can undo the damage this child suffered," Gillispie said afterward, "but the jury's decision holds the defendant accountable and makes it clear that ignoring basic safety and licensing requirements will have serious consequences."

On this site the verdict ranks second in Arkansas, behind the $122.5 million Pierce v. Mann judgment.