A 27-year-old mother in Indiana who was already on probation for the death of her 6-month-old daughter in 2019 due to neglect has been arrested again, this time for allegedly leaving her four young children at home alone for nearly two weeks.
Tenisha Ann Echols was taken into custody on Monday and charged with multiple new counts of child neglect, according to records. According to a probable cause affidavit, police responded to an apartment complex on Troy Avenue around 9:15 p.m. on Sunday after receiving a call from Echols’ mother, who stated that her 8-year-old granddaughter had made a disturbing call. The girl was crying because she had been left at home alone with her three younger siblings — a 6-year-old, a 2-year-old, and a 4-month-old — and had barely seen her mother in the previous two weeks.
When police arrived at the address, they reported that the door was unlocked, there was partially eaten food and trash “all over the floor,” the children’s beds were bare mattresses, and it appeared that “an adult hadn’t been around in days.”
The 8-year-old told police that Echols usually leaves her alone to look after the other children, including the infant. The child made several attempts to call her mother, but Echols did not answer the phone, according to the affidavit.
Police were able to contact Echols, who arrived at the apartment around 10 p.m. and claimed she had only gone out briefly to “get medicine for one of the kids.” She was handcuffed, read her Miranda rights, and then agreed to speak with detectives.
When asked how long she’d been gone, Echols allegedly replied, “About 20 minutes.” Based on the information provided by the grandmother and the 8-year-old child, police concluded that the “time itself did not make sense.”
When confronted with her daughter’s claims, Echols allegedly admitted that she had been out all day and typically “leaves her kids home alone with the 8-year-old at times because she doesn’t feel like dragging them all out of the house at once.”
When asked if she thought it was safe to leave an 8-year-old in charge of a 4-month-old, Echols “gave no reply.”
Echols also told officers that she had blocked most of her family members from calling her because she didn’t want to argue with them about “her sexuality.”
The children were removed from the house and placed under the care of their grandmother.
Echols was still on probation at the time of her arrest for the death of her infant daughter, De’Reya, who died from multiple blunt force injuries in December 2019, according to Indianapolis ABC affiliate WRTV. An autopsy revealed that the infant had multiple skull fractures, a large burn on her arm, and fractures in both her tibia and ribs. De’Reya’s death was ruled homicide.
In July 2023, Echols pleaded guilty to one count of neglect of a dependent resulting in serious bodily injury. Judge Jennifer Harrison imposed a lenient sentence that included two years of home detention, two years of probation, and no time in prison, defying prosecutors’ recommendations.
Echols’ latest neglect charges violated her probation, so a judge ordered that she be held in pretrial detention without bond until her next court appearance on July 8.
