Background: Michael Mayor (Miami County Jail). Inset: Vivian Gardner (Jamieson & Yannucci Funeral Home).
An Ohio man who pleaded guilty to murdering a 1-year-old after she would not stop crying was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
Michael Mayor, 34, learned his sentence on Tuesday, just over a month since he changed his plea from not guilty by reason of insanity to guilty at the end of June. Mayor admitted to slamming the head of 1-year-old Vivian Gardner on the floor after she would not stop crying when he was first arrested in December 2024. He had been left to care for the girl while his wife, a professional babysitter who had been watching Vivian, left to take other children to school.
According to police, Mayor told them that “he “shook’ her, and when she cried louder, he began to ‘slam’ her on the floor of the bedroom. He stated this was not done on the blankets and he did this several times until she stopped crying.”
Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.
The Dayton Daily News was in the courtroom when the sentence was announced, which the judge noted was the mandatory sentence for a murder conviction in Ohio. Judge Jeannine Pratt told Mayor, “If I had the discretion, you would be getting a much larger sentence.”
As Law&Crime previously reported, Mayor was in charge of watching Vivian on Dec. 5, 2024. When his wife returned from bringing the other children to school, he told her that Vivian was taking a nap on the bedroom floor. Mayor’s wife, who checked on the baby several times, called 911 when the little girl was still not awake at 3:00 p.m.
Vivian was taken to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with a fractured skull, a subdural hematoma, and additional “complex” injuries that were caused by a “massive impact.”
More from Law&Crime: 1-year-old baby dies from ‘massive impact’ after man repeatedly slammed her to the floor when she kept crying louder: Police
The little girl died on Dec. 19. Mayor was arrested on Dec. 11, 2024, and initially charged with felonious assault and three counts of endangering children. After Vivian succumbed to her injuries, the assault charges were upgraded to three counts of murder. All but one of those charges were dismissed when he pleaded guilty in June.
In court, Mayor’s defense attorney said that his client wrote a letter apologizing to the family for what he did. Pratt was apparently unmoved and said that Mayor did not appear to be remorseful, according to the Dayton Daily News. Vivian’s family said in a statement from a spokesperson that they were not satisfied with the possibility that Mayor “may be free to rejoin society, to be around children once more.”
Vivian’s family has pledged to try to support reforms to sentencing “that will ensure that the punishments for violent crimes are commensurate with the impact they have on victims, their families and our communities.”
