Transient Pleads Guilty To Breaking Laramie Woman’s Face

A transient man accused of breaking his ex-girlfriend’s face after she asked him to leave her home pleaded guilty Monday in a Laramie courthouse. David Leyba, 60, evaded arrest for nearly a year after the attack. 

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Clair McFarland

January 27, 20253 min read

Nearly a year after punching Laramie resident Wendy Budrow in the face so hard he broke her jaw "from ear to ear," the suspect, David Leyba, has been caught in Colorado
Nearly a year after punching Laramie resident Wendy Budrow in the face so hard he broke her jaw "from ear to ear," the suspect, David Leyba, has been caught in Colorado (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily)

A transient man accused of breaking his ex-girlfriend’s face after she asked him to leave her home pleaded guilty Monday in a Laramie, Wyoming, courthouse. 

David Wayne Leyba, 60, wore an orange shirt, shackles and spectacles to his change of plea hearing Monday in Albany County District Court. When he first confessed to injuring his ex-girlfriend Wendy Budrow’s upper palate and sinuses, he did it so quietly a court transcriber couldn’t hear him, and she asked him to confess again. 

Leyba and Budrow were in a dating relationship that turned sour in 2023. She kicked him out of her home, but had pity on him and let him stay in her shed for a while, Budrow told Cowboy State Daily in an earlier interview. 

When that was also disastrous, she asked him to get his things and leave. She tried to arrange it so they wouldn’t be in her house at the same time. But when she came home on July 25, 2023, Leyba was still in her home, she said. 

They argued, and he punched her in the face, says the evidentiary affidavit in Leyba’s case. 

“He left me in a bloody pile,” Budrow said. 

He looked down at her as she lay crumpled on the floor. 

“Oh, you’re not hurt that badly,” said Leyba, Budrow recalled in her prior interview, adding that he told her not to call police. 

Then he threw a towel onto her, hid her phone in an obscure drawer she never uses and left, she said. 

Budrow picked herself up and went out to the street to flag down passersby. The first driver she waved down happened to be a paramedic. He called an ambulance immediately while he attended to Budrow, she said. 

She said hospital personnel later noted that she’d need facial reconstruction surgery and her sinuses appeared broken, along with her upper palate.

Leyba vanished after the attack. Budrow spent the next 11 months of her life looking over her shoulder, she said, until Leyba was arrested in Colorado in June of 2024.

 

The Agreement

Leyba agreed to plead guilty to aggravated assault as part of a plea agreement, his defense attorney David Korman told Albany County District Court Judge Misha Westby during the Monday hearing. 

The state agreed to dismiss other charges of domestic battery and violation of a protection order, the defender added. 

At Leyba’s later sentencing date, the prosecutor will be recommending a sentence of 6 to 8 years in prison, but with a “split” in that term, meaning Leyba would serve only a portion of the term in prison and have the rest suspended in favor of probation, according to court statements. 

Leyba would complete inpatient treatment during his probation term, Korman said. 

The ratio of the term Leyba would spend in prison versus in probation would be up to Westby, the defense attorney added. 

The case prosecutor detailed Leyba’s attack, and how Budrow bled from her mouth and nose and was transferred to a trauma unit at a medical facility. 

“Is that what happened in this case, Mr. Leyba?” asked Westby.

Leyba gave an inaudible answer. A court transcriber asked the judge to have him repeat himself. 

Westby asked, again, if the evidence listed against him was a true account. 

“Yes,” answered Leyba, loudly and clearly.

 Westby is ordering a pre-sentence investigation in the case, a practice judges use to learn more about defendants’ life and circumstances before sentencing them.

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.

Authors

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Clair McFarland

Crime and Courts Reporter