Provo • In the hospital room, the mother barely recognized her 19-year-old daughter. The teen's face was badly swollen and her hair was covered with blood following a daylight attack along the Provo River Trail.

The first thing the mother says she remembers her daughter asking was "if he would come back and finish killing her."

On Tuesday, a 4th District judge made that an impossibility by sentencing the attacker, Shawn Michael Leonard, to life in prison without parole for the June 2010 assault.

"This is a young woman who will never be the same," Judge Claudia Laycock said of Leonard's victim, now 20. "This could happen again as we have no logical explanation as to why it happened this time. The only reasonable alternative is life without parole."

The victim of the riverside attack spent two weeks in a hospital. Surgeons worked to reconstruct her face. Already weighing just 130 pounds at 5-foot-11, she lost 20 more with her jaw wired shut.

She has improved greatly in the year since the attack, her parents said Tuesday, though she still suffers from double vision in one eye and will have to wait several months before doctors will be able to replace the teeth she lost.

Through a victim's advocate, the woman asked the judge to keep Leonard in prison for the rest of his life. In the statement, she said, "If [he] ever gets out he will do this again and the next time the victim won't be so lucky."

Leonard's sister, Shannon Proffitt, said in court her brother struggled with a methamphetamine addiction and his attorneys said the attacks were drug-induced.

"My brother's not a monster or a predator like a lot of people try to portray him as," Proffitt said. "Shawn has a very good heart. He's not capable of this in his right mind."

Deputy Utah County Attorney Donna Kelly, however, called Leonard a narcissist and a career criminal who leaned on his drug use as an excuse for his crimes.

"I really struggle with my feelings toward this man," the victim's father said in court. "Sometimes, I have great animosity toward him because of what he did to my daughter and my family. Other times, I pity him ... ."

On June 9, 2010, Leonard's victim had been by the river, writing in a notebook, when Leonard approached her and asked her for money, according to testimony she gave at a February preliminary hearing. When she said she did not have any, Leonard demanded she get on the ground.

Then, the woman testified, Leonard tied a string around her neck and choked her. She fought with Leonard until she lost consciousness. During the struggle, Leonard bashed the woman's face with a cinder block, prosecutors said.

The woman awoke later to find her pants and underwear below her knees and her bra pulled up. She crawled to a place on the trail where she could be seen and called for help.

Doctors said the woman would have died without immediate medical attention.

"When he left her that day, he left the scene believing he was a murderer," Kelly said.

Leonard, meanwhile, left the area and headed toward a Provo shopping center, where he robbed a woman at knifepoint, tied her hands and stole her car. DNA from the victim along the river was found on a shoelace used to bind the other woman's hands.

The crime spree started when Leonard walked away from a jail work-release program, where he had been serving time for drug possession and identity theft. Police linked him to the crime because his jail-issued ankle bracelet was found near the river.

Leonard pleaded guilty in April to two counts of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery and attempted aggravated murder, all first-degree felonies. As part of the plea agreement, a charge of aggravated sexual assault was dropped.

afalk@sltrib.com

Twitter: @aaronfalk