A Florida lawyer is suspended after her husband punched and threw their child
Suspension starts Saturday for a St. Petersburg attorney convicted of doing nothing as her husband punched their 3-year-old girl and hurled the child into a bedroom door during an extended beating, according to court files and police reports.
Amber Patwell’s analysis of Feb. 15, 2022: She couldn’t do more for her child after taking her own beating from Eric Patwell, a former Marine with PTSD.
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“I had vomited blood all over the stairs of my house and I was so incoherent I could barely remember my daughters’ birth days and had no idea what had transpired,” Patwell wrote in a June 30 Facebook post showing bodycam footage of Pasco County Sheriff’s Office personnel.
Two weeks before the post, Amber Patwell was sentenced to 24 months of drug offender probation after a Pasco jury convicted her of third-degree child neglect without great bodily harm. Patwell is appealing the sentence by Judge Joshua Riba as well as the conviction, which is what drew the interim felony suspension by the state Supreme Court.
The court docket shows 16 letters of pre-sentence support for Patwell, including one from a former client who filed a Florida Bar grievance against her and believes te attorney owes her money. Patwell practiced criminal law and family law.
The same day Amber Patwell received her sentence, Eric Patwell got two 10-year sentences, one for each count of aggravated child abuse to which he pleaded guilty. The sentences will run concurrently, so the Florida Department of Corrections entry projects he will be released on Feb. 16, 2032.
A court filing said Pasco County Sheriff’s Office Child Protective Investigator Tara Galipault “saw two contusions to the front of the child’s head; scrapes from the back of the scapula to the mid-back; bruising and scratching to (the child’s) ear; blood in (her) nose; a redness to (the child’s) nose itself.
“(She) told CPI Galipault, ‘Daddy hit me and threw me against the wall.’”
Patwell’s Facebook post said: ““Most notably and most thankfully, my daughter had minor injuries and neither of us have any memory of this event. Below is a video of my eyes rolling back into my head and the blood coming out of head when I was accused of neglecting of my child. I had to get three staples in the back of my head and I suffered from a concussion.”
The arrest report, which claimed to be from security cam footage, said Amber Patwell “entered the bedroom during the attack and aided the child momentarily before putting her back into her bed.”
But after Eric Patwell resumed beating the girl, “at no time did (Amber Patwell), who is the child’s mother, make any attempt to stop this brutal attack or protect her child.”
A neighbor called 911.
In an ongoing related case, Amber Patwell also pleaded not guilty to a perjury charge. The charging documents say she claimed in a June 19, 2023, hearing that she hadn’t spoken with Eric Patwell since the previous February.
Investigators say in going through Eric Patwell’s communications, they found e-messages to “Mollie Charlene,” who they believe is Amber Patwell. They also say they found 459 phone calls between the Patwells, with Eric Patwell using other inmates’ identification numbers.
