An Indianapolis woman charged with neglect after her toddler daughter was found dead underneath a dresser has now been charged with murder.
An autopsy revealed that 2-year-old Skylar Gardner died from hypothermia and that she had several injuries, some of the post-mortem and believed to have been caused by a rodent, WRTV reported.
Chantell Gardner called 911 on January 25 when she had found the little girl unresponsive and “cold to the touch,” as CrimeOnline reported. She told detectives that she frequently left the children alone for a hours at a time but always came back once a day to feed them. Her boyfriend corroborated her story, saying she spent every night with him and that the children rarely accompanied her.
New court documents detail the injuries the little girl suffered and say the apartment where they lived was filled with clutter, with walls, floors, and furniture covered in filth, some of it feces. Detectives called the apartment a “biohazard,” WXIN reported.
Gardner denied physically harming toddler or her 3-year-old brother but admitted the neglect. She said she had stopped taking the children to doctor’s appointments because she feared they would be taken away. She eventually stopped taking the children out of the house at all because of the “hygience and smell.”
She also said she knew the furnace in her apartment wasn’t working but hadn’t reported it to maintenance because she didn’t want anyone to see the condition of the residence.
Gardner’s boyfriend, Brian Thomas, has been charged with assisting a criminal.
