Kevin Gavarrete and Julia Sizemore admitted neglect charges and received 30-year prison terms after Kayden Gavarrete died in December 2024.
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Sentences to 30 years in prison were handed down after guilty pleas in a child neglect case that began when police found a boy dead and severely malnourished days before Christmas 2024. The father of the 7-year-old Indianapolis boy and the father’s girlfriend have admitted their roles in his death.
The sentencing resolved one of the city’s most disturbing child death cases in recent memory. Rather than take the case to trial on a broader set of allegations, prosecutors and defense lawyers reached plea agreements that guaranteed long prison terms for Kevin Gavarrete and Julia Sizemore. The agreements also narrowed the legal fight, turning public attention from what counts a jury might consider to the admitted facts surrounding Kayden Gavarrete’s death and the failures of the adults charged with caring for him.
The case started with an emergency call on Dec. 22, 2024, at a home on South Pershing Avenue. Indianapolis police arrived shortly before 4 p.m. and found Kayden unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Officers reported visible trauma and severe signs of neglect, and the investigation quickly shifted from a death inquiry to a child abuse case. The father and his girlfriend were arrested the next day. In the early stages, the allegations were broad and severe. Prosecutors said the pair had beaten, starved and confined the child, while the adults offered explanations that centered on illness and behavior. Over time, those competing accounts gave way to more fixed medical findings. The public record established that Kayden was badly underweight and carried injuries across his body. By the time the plea hearing arrived, the case no longer hinged on whether the child had been harmed, but on how the criminal charges would be resolved.
That resolution came through guilty pleas to neglect of a dependent resulting in death and related neglect counts tied to placing the boy in an endangering situation. Marion Superior Judge Marshelle Dawkins Broadwell accepted the agreements and sentenced both defendants to 30 years in prison. The plea terms meant prosecutors did not proceed to trial on dismissed counts that had included battery and criminal confinement allegations. They also meant the state did not test murder charges before a jury, even though the prosecutor’s office had earlier said that option remained possible while the case developed. Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said after sentencing that the case ranked among the worst his office had handled in two decades. His statement reflected both the brutality alleged in the records and the legal calculus behind the plea deal: certainty of punishment, no trial delay, and no risk that jurors could reject some or all of the most serious accusations.
The facts described by investigators remained central even without trial testimony. Kayden weighed 32 pounds when he died, according to the coroner’s findings cited in local reports and court coverage. Authorities said he had bruises, cuts, abrasions and small burn marks on his body and face. The coroner found multiple blunt force trauma injuries and complications from malnutrition. Kevin Gavarrete told detectives the boy had hurt himself during tantrums and had stopped eating and drinking because he was sick. He also said he feared how hospital staff might react if he brought the child in for treatment. Those statements did not explain the full condition officers described at the house. Sizemore, for her part, told police she had not seen Gavarrete strike the boy and had stayed out of what she called his personal business. Public accounts indicate she also failed to get medical help. What remains unknown from the public record is the exact frequency of assaults, the full chronology of the child’s decline inside the home, and who outside the household, if anyone, saw him in the final days.
One striking detail in the broader case history was the father’s statement that Kayden had been homeschooled for about a year because of bullying. That account, whatever its accuracy, added a layer of isolation to the story. A child away from school can disappear from the daily sight of teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and nurses who often notice sudden weight loss, injuries or fear. The neighborhood setting itself was ordinary: a house near Ross Claypool Park on the near southwest side, close to busy streets and other homes. Yet prosecutors described conditions inside that ended in a child’s death. Coverage of the hearing showed family members packed into the courtroom, underscoring how the legal case had become a public reckoning for relatives who had lost Kayden and waited more than a year for a final sentence. Their presence gave shape to the human stakes that court records alone could not fully convey.
The hearing ended with short apologies from both defendants, who used nearly identical language to say they were sorry and that the death should not have happened. Those statements did little to alter the established outline of the case. By then, the essential steps were complete: the child had died, police had documented the scene, the coroner had identified blunt-force trauma and malnutrition, prosecutors had charged the adults, and the court had accepted negotiated guilty pleas. The next phase is administrative rather than dramatic. Both defendants will serve their state prison sentences, and the case will stand as a closed criminal matter unless future post-conviction filings emerge. For the public, the final marker remains the same one delivered in court in February 2026: two 30-year terms imposed in the death of a child who should have been protected inside his own home.
As of March 22, 2026, the next concrete milestone is the execution of the prison sentences, with no public indication of additional criminal hearings after the February 2026 sentencing.
Author note: Last updated March 22, 2026.