Left: Cheyenne Hill appears in a booking photo (Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department); Right: Elliaunna Plummer (Obituary)
An Indiana woman who neglected her 20-month-old daughter until she died, all while denigrating the girl with bizarre and cruel insults, will spend the next several decades behind bars.
Cheyenne Hill, 34, was convicted in February on one count of neglect of a dependent resulting in death by jurors in Lawrence County.
Earlier this week, Judge John Plummer III assessed the defendant a sentence of 30 years for the late 2022 death of Elliaunna Plummer.
“This is a sad case, very said,” the judge said during a sentencing hearing on Tuesday, according to a courtroom report by Bedford-based radio station WBIW. “This little girl needed someone to advocate for her, speak up for her, and protect her. It was Cheyenne’s responsibility to do that, and she did not. This is very tragic. This was an emotional case and was hard for everyone. To some extent, there is justice for Elliaunna today.”
On Nov. 23, 2022, the child was airlifted from Indiana University Health Hospital Bedford to the university’s Riley Hospital for Children. She was suffering from a brain bleed, a broken collarbone, and bruises on her head and face. Elliaunna succumbed to her injuries that day.
The final days of the girl’s short life are relayed in a shocking and detailed probable cause affidavit filed in August 2023. Hill was arrested and formally charged in late September 2023 and pleaded not guilty.
Content warning: references to extreme child abuse.
“Pictures of [the girl] prior to being transported to Indianapolis revealed a swollen and deformed head and bruising on her forehead and the left and right sides of her face,” a detective wrote. “Red-brownish marks were observable underneath both eyes.”
The same caseworker who called law enforcement also reported that two Department of Child Services tips had been left anonymously about Hill in the days leading up to the initial hospital visit — reporting about possible drug use and almost certain child abuse.
The second call came the day the child was taken to the hospital, some eight days after the bruises appeared, the affidavit says.
“The caller reported [the girl] had had what appeared to be three fingerprint marks on one side of her face and one on the other consistent with what seemed to have been caused by someone grabbing her face and squeezing,” the document reads. “The caller described [the girl’s] condition as lethargic, that she would not wake up, appeared ‘half dead,’ and could barely hold her head up. The caller stated [the girl’s] mother left for work, leaving [the girl] with the individual she had been living with despite [the girl’s] condition.”
During trial, prosecutors painted the since-condemned woman as a selfish person who was more interested in smoking marijuana, getting fast food and leftovers, keeping her boyfriend and being able to live with him than she ever cared about her daughter, WBIW reports.
To that end, jurors also heard unsupported, horrifying, and odd comments from the defendant about her toddler.
The day before she died, in an interview with a representative for a donor network, Hill described her daughter as “not a nice kid” and said that she believed her child would have been the next “Jeffrey Dahmer” because “something wasn’t right with her.”
The month before Elliaunna died, Hill sent her boyfriend, Cameron Fleming, a message that read: “[She] was f—— terrible last night when we came back. I wouldn’t stop crying. I wanted to throw her.” The next week, she sent Fleming the following message: “Let me get this a—— to bed.”
Some of those comments were later repeated to police.
On Dec. 7, 2022, an investigating officer asked Hill why she went to work the day her daughter was in the hospital and wouldn’t wake up.
The detective provided the following summary of their conversation:
Cheyenne replied, because I had to provide for my daughter. I ask Cheyenne who would do that. She replied, someone who is about to be homeless.
I told her being in a time of crises that is unimaginable and her (Cheyenne) referring to [her daughter] as being Jeffrey Dahmer. Cheyenne Hill began to laugh and said she [her daughter] is an a——.
Still, the prosecution did not press forward with the idea that Hill herself actually directly killed her own daughter. But, the state said and jurors agreed, the level of neglect and harm had the same result.
“She did it knowingly,” Chief Deputy Prosecutor Joshua Scherschel said during the state’s closing argument.
“We don’t know beyond a reasonable doubt who did the physical act that killed Elli Plummer,” the prosecutor continued. “Unfortunately we do know her mother had a responsibility to care for that child, but she put her in danger to the point of death.”
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