LAWRENCE COUNTY, Ind. (TCD) — A judge sentenced a 34-year-old woman to three decades in prison after for abusing and killing her daughter, who she said was “not a nice kid” and “would have been the next Jeffrey Dahmer.”
The Lawrence County Prosecutor’s Office announced that Cheyenne Hill was ordered to spend 30 years in prison after she was found guilty in February of neglect of a dependent causing death.
On Nov. 23, 2022, at around 11 a.m., 19-month-old Elliaunna Plummer was taken to a local hospital with possible child abuse-related injuries, then flown to another hospital, where she died from her wounds. According to Hill’s affidavit, Plummer’s injuries included a brain bleed, broken collarbone, a “swollen and deformed head,” and other bruising.
A few days before the girl’s hospitalization, the Indiana Department of Child Services received two calls about concern for the child. On Nov. 17, 2022, a neighbor contacted the department to report “suspicious smells coming from near the apartment,” and noted that Hill had openly admitted to smoking marijuana and using meth. The neighbor also reportedly noticed bruises on Plummer’s face.
On Nov. 23, 2022, at 10:58 a.m., another person called DCS and said the injuries are “possibly abuse-related that it appeared to be non-accidental, and was suspicious and/or inconsistent with the explanation given for the injury.” The caller claimed the girl had marks on her face that day and would “not wake up, appeared ‘half dead,’ and could barely hold her head up.'”
Hill claimed she woke up at around 8 a.m. on Nov. 22 and that Plummer appeared pale and unresponsive. Earlier that morning, she reportedly woke up and saw her daughter had a swollen forehead, but she did not call 911 because “she felt as a mom she would know if something was wrong with her baby.”
The day prior, Hill’s boyfriend, Cameron Fleming, picked Plummer up from the babysitter and noticed she had an injury on her forehead that was “so big that one side of the swelling was down further on the forehead than the other.”
Hill went to work on Nov. 23 and left her daughter in Fleming’s care. He took her to the hospital after noticing her breathing was “labored and erratic.”
The babysitter and her fiancé reportedly noted the girl’s forehead swelling, but Hill reportedly told the fiancé, “Under no circumstances are you allowed to call an ambulance or take her in yourself.”
In an October text message to Fleming, Hill called Plummer an “a–hole.”
A family representative with the Indiana Donor Network spoke with Hill on Nov. 25, 2022, and Hill told her that her daughter was “not a nice kid” and how she believed “[Plummer] would have been the next Jeffrey Dahmer.”
Plummer died Nov. 26, 2022. She was reportedly malnourished and 10 pounds underweight. Her cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head and her manner of death was homicide.
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