He said he moved Cheryl upstairs before opening the house to the officers. While police searched the basement, she was elsewhere. Delante emphasized how little time it took him to accomplish this and then mocked the first search for ending too soon. He said the officers had been given a complaint about someone in the basement, checked that space, and left rather than opening doors and searching more widely. "Next time take it serious," he told the detectives as he criticized the earlier search.
The detectives allowed him to continue. When he criticized their work, one of them dryly accepted the criticism and moved on to the more important question: what changed before the second visit? Delante acknowledged that he moved Cheryl again and placed her into a container before moving it toward the porch.
Then they asked about the music. There was no complicated explanation. Delante said he kept it loud so that if Cheryl made noise, the officers would not hear her.
Detectives also confronted him with how strange that made the second encounter look in hindsight. Officers had repeatedly asked for the music to be lowered because they thought they heard movement. Delante had resisted until he no longer controlled the scene. His answer connected those observations directly to Cheryl: the volume was intentional, and the purpose was to mask her if she called out.
When Cheryl's medical condition improved enough for detectives to speak with her, she gave her own account. She said Delante was her dealer and that he had accused her of being an informant. She described being held for days, repeatedly assaulted, stabbed, dragged through the house, struck with objects, and moved between different containers and rooms. She also described being subjected to water in a way that made it difficult to breathe and said drugs were used to keep her dependent while she was suffering.
Her account placed the violence in a longer and more severe context than Delante's attempt to frame the situation as a short-term effort to protect himself. The precise details varied between statements, but both accounts agreed on the central facts: Cheryl was prevented from leaving, repeatedly harmed, moved around the house, and hidden when police came to search.
As the criminal case developed, Delante remained focused on his informant status. He asked detectives to document that he had been cooperating with police and repeatedly suggested that his work should matter when a judge considered bond. He said he liked helping get guns and drugs off the street and claimed that Detective Smith would understand the value of putting him back to work.
He even spoke as though release would allow him to continue the same operation immediately. Delante said that if the court gave him a bond he could make, Detective Smith would help him get back out and he would return to working cases. The detectives did not promise that. Their responses stayed procedural: the judge would determine bond, and his informant relationship would be documented rather than treated as immunity.
His expectations were not matched by the court's response. Bond was set at $750,000. The source says he reacted at the hearing with a middle-finger gesture. Days later, in a jail call with his mother, he talked through the possibility that the amount might eventually be reduced and discussed property, tools, a trailer, and business assets that could potentially be used as collateral.
The call showed that he still seemed to believe the case might end with a comparatively limited punishment. His mother discussed future court dates while Delante focused on whether he could somehow secure release. What neither of them could minimize was Cheryl's condition and the evidence already captured in Delante's own interview.
Six months later, Cheryl appeared at a court hearing and described the lasting consequences of what had happened. According to the source, she told the judge that she remained approximately 98 percent paralyzed and required help with basic daily needs. Her survival did not mean she had recovered; the injuries had permanently changed her life.
Delante Edmund Guyger ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of felonious assault, one count of kidnapping, one count of possessing a weapon while under disability, and one count of tampering with evidence. In November 2023, the judge described the case as unlike anything he had seen during his time on the bench.
Delante was sentenced to 16 to 20 years in prison. The source lists an expected release date in April 2039 and identifies Trumbull Correctional Institution as the facility where he was incarcerated at the time of publication.
The case was disturbing not only because of what Cheryl endured, but because police had stood inside the same house hours earlier and left without finding her. Delante later admitted that he had deliberately moved her before that first search and then used loud music during the second visit to hide any sound she might make. What began as an uncertain 911 tip from a stranger ultimately became a case in which the suspect's own words explained how close officers had come to leaving twice without discovering the truth.