A young mother is facing a second round of felony neglect charges.
Cheyanne Meredith, 23, of Sweetwater Trail, was charged Aug. 31 with two counts of neglect of a dependent, Level 6 felonies, after passers-by reported finding a 2- and a 3-year-old walking alone in the 8500 block of Sweetwater Trail on Aug. 1.
Brown County Sheriff’s Deputy Jimmy Green reported in a probable cause affidavit that one of the children was wearing a diaper that was “visibly full of urine” and barely hanging on her, and the other was wearing only underwear. When he arrived, the caller and two others were standing in the front yard of a home holding the two toddlers. The caller said he and his wife were driving south when they saw the children walking alone with no clothing on.
The caller said the children then ran toward a boat and crawled under it in a front yard at a home in the 8500 block. He said he knocked on the door of that home and the woman there said she did not know the toddlers.
After calling police, the caller said he saw a woman walking north on the road, but when she saw him and the woman who answered the door, she turned back around, the affidavit states.
The woman — later identified as Meredith — returned to the scene about 10 to 15 minutes after the officer arrived and asked the officer and the witnesses if they had seen her two young children. She said they were all playing in the side yard of her parents’ home in the 8600 block — where they sometimes stay — when the children entered a camper on the property.
Meredith said she stayed outside of the camper on the north side and did not see the toddlers exit the south side of the camper.
She said she noticed the toddlers were missing when she went to check on them, then she notified her family to help look for them. She did not have a reason for why she didn’t call 911, the report said.
Meredith mentioned having an active case with Child Protective Services involving her 8-year-old. Green then contacted CPS and a caseworker said they would respond to Meredith’s parents’ home.
Green reported that the children did not want to go with Meredith and that they hugged him and the witnesses multiple times, saying they wanted to go with them and not their mother, the affidavit said.
Two witnesses carried the children back home because they would not go with Meredith; they were “clinging to the witnesses,” the report said.
Two of Meredith’s sisters took the children. The caseworker told police that they would work out a plan so children could stay in the home, the report said.
In 2016, Meredith was charged with neglect of a dependent after police began an investigation seven months prior at a home in Edinburgh where she had been living. Inside the Edinburgh home, police found animal feces and urine on the floor, trash cans overflowing and no clean clothes. The child involved in that case would come to school tired, dirty and hungry, his teachers and counselors said. He also told his teachers that he would get up in the middle of the night to feed his 3-month-old sister, according to police reports.
Meredith served two days in jail and was sentenced to 363 days of probation in that case in Johnson Circuit Court starting in September 2017, according to online court records.
