KEARNS — Ten-year-old Shelby Laice Andrews was proud to be the only girl on her baseball team. She loved soccer and sports; she also loved wearing brightly painted fingernails and doing her mother's hair and makeup.
On Saturday, friends and family, including a handful of Syracuse police officers, said goodbye to the little girl whose father and stepmother are charged in her beating death.
"Even though she liked girl stuff, she was quite the little daredevil," Shelby's uncle, Jeff Andrews, said Saturday at Shelby's funeral.
Shelby lived in Syracuse with her father and stepmother, but the funeral was held at the Kearns meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that her maternal grandparents attend.
Syracuse police found Shelby's body at the home of her father and stepmother Aug. 1 after her brother called 911. Shelby was badly beaten by a belt, and her head had been slammed into a wall with enough force to break a hole in the sheetrock, police said. About 80 percent of her body had bruises, contusions and bite marks — some new and others several weeks old.
Her father, 38-year-old Ryan William Andrews, and stepmother, Angela Ray Andrews, 35, are each charged with first-degree felony murder and sexual abuse of a child. They are being held in the Davis County Jail on $500,000 bail. Angela Andrews' attorney told the Deseret Morning News last week his client was not responsible for the fatal injuries.
Syracuse Police Sgt. Mark Sessions said the apparent motive for the beating was that Shelby was "out of control" and "not doing exactly what she should be doing" when it came to chores.
"Yes, she's cool," Shelby Andrews wrote in a poem about herself in which each line began with a letter of her first name. Jeff Andrews, who read the poem Saturday, said Shelby was not only cool; she was also a caring, "bright and wonderful girl."
After Shelby's grandfather had a stroke and had to retire, Shelby brought him a kitten so he would not be lonely at home during the day. When Shelby was 3 and her younger sister was born, "She was a good little mother to her new sister. She was always looking out for her," Jeff Andrews said.
As a toddler, Shelby lived in Kearns. When her parents divorced, she moved with her father to Ogden. After Ryan and Angela Andrews married, they moved to Syracuse, where Shelby went to school. She would have started the fifth grade this fall.
In her last journal entry, Shelby wrote of a recent family camping trip during which she, her mother, her sister and her brother all caught their first fish. She wrote that she had had a great time and hoped to go back again someday.
"It's heartbreaking that we won't have the privilege of reading more of what she would have written, but we know her journal pages would have been filled with the love from her family and friends and the wonderful adventures of her life," Jeff Andrews said.
Shelby's aunt, Janice Andrews, encouraged family and friends to "say goodbye to the shock and anger" they have felt since learning of Shelby's death and to find comfort in each other's support.
"Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes, of gains and losses. They come as a matched set," she said. "Today we say goodbye to Shelby Laice Andrews while looking forward to saying hello to her again."
Bishop David Sharp of the Kearns Western Hills LDS 2nd Ward told those attending that God's plan for humankind doesn't promise every experience will be a happy one; it will, however, ultimately result in eternal happiness.
"We don't know why such a beautiful young girl was taken so early in her life, but we can all be better people because of her life," he said.
Shelby Andrews was interred at Redwood Memorial Estates, 6500 S. Redwood Road.
E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com