After 50 minutes of deliberation, a jury found a local mother guilty of two counts of child neglect.
Cheyanne Meredith, 24, was charged last August with two counts of neglect of a dependent, Level 6 felonies, after passers-by reported finding her 2- and a 3-year-old walking alone in the 8500 block of Sweetwater Trail. One was wearing a diaper that was “visibly full of urine” and barely hanging on her. The other was wearing only underwear, according to a probable cause affidavit by Brown County Sheriff’s Deputy Jimmy Green.
When Green arrived, the caller and two other people were standing in the yard of a home holding the toddlers. The caller said he and his wife were driving by and saw the children walking alone. The caller said the children ran toward a boat and crawled under it. He said he knocked on the door of that home and the woman there said she did not know the children.
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 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 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. She said she stayed outside the camper and did not see the toddlers exit the opposite side of it. 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.
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; they were “clinging to the witnesses,” the report said.
Two of Meredith’s sisters took the children.
This was Meredith’s second round of felony neglect charges.
During the trial, Prosecutor Ted Adams told the jury that the children had not been bathed in days and were hungry and cold, according to a press release from Adams.
Meredith was represented by local attorney Greg Bowes who argued that Meredith had not knowingly placed the children in a dangerous situation after only briefly losing sight of them.
The prosecution argued that Meredith should have known that not watching the children would result in them being placed in a dangerous situation because of how close to the road the home was. Adams argued that her actions showed a pattern of the children not being watched.
Meredith’s lack of maternal reaction upon finding the children also was brought up. “Every civilian witness testified that she seemed unconcerned for the well-being of her children,” Adams wrote.
Adams thanked the five people who stopped to help the kids.
The trial lasted two days, April 17 and 18. Adams asked that Meredith remain in jail until sentencing because she had a prior conviction for the same crime, but Judge Mary Wertz denied that request.
Meredith will be sentenced May 14 at 3 p.m. Adams intends to ask that she serve jail time.
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. 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.
