An East Baton Rouge jury found a man guilty of second-degree murder and obstruction of justice on Thursday for his role the killing of a 2-year-old girl.Â
Phillip Kegan Gardner, 34, packed his unresponsive stepdaughter, Nevaeh Allen, into a suitcase and drove to a Mississippi swamp where he buried her body.
Nevaeh was the daughter of Gardner's live-in girlfriend, Lanaya Brittany Cardwell. Authorities said Cardwell, 27, punched and beat the toddler while readying for work the morning of Sept. 24, 2021.
After Gardner drove the mother to her job and returned home with Nevaeh and two of her siblings, the girl became ill. Gardner later found her unconscious, without a pulse and pale in the face. Thinking the child was dead, he folded her limp body into a suitcase, rolled the bag out of the couple’s Baton Rouge apartment, dragged it down the stairs and stashed it in the trunk of his car.
Gardner then drove across the Mississippi state line to the Pearl River, where prosecutors said he buried Nevaeh deep in the woods.
When he returned to the family’s apartment in the 12600 block of West Labelle Avenue later that afternoon, Gardner called 911 and reported the child missing. That provoked a frantic, high-profile search for Neveah that spanned two states and involved the FBI and nearly a dozen other law enforcement agencies.
The four-day search ended after it became clear Neveah’s purported disappearance was a hoax and the child had actually been killed.
A jury of seven men and five women listened to eight days of testimony from a host of investigators, medical examiners who performed Nevaeh’s autopsy and two of the children who were in the apartment during the attack. And Thursday, they heard closing arguments from the attorneys.
The jury deliberated for 4½ hours to find Gardner guilty of both charges. He faces a mandatory life sentence for the second-degree murder conviction and can be imprisoned up to 40 years on the obstruction charge. District Judge Fred Crifasi, who presided over the trial, ordered a presentence investigation and set the sentencing hearing to be held July 30.
Cardwell also has been indicted on a charge of second-degree murder, and her trial is set to begin Nov. 3.
Dr. Yen Van Vo, the East Baton Rouge forensic pathologist who performed Neveah’s autopsy, testified that while the toddler may have been unconscious, she was still alive after Gardener disposed of her.
Vo testified that the girl had 12 points of impact on her skull, indicative of a long pattern of abuse. She ruled the victim died of multiple blunt force trauma wounds.
During Thursday’s proceedings, Assistant District Attorney Laura Tracy argued that Gardner failed to provide Nevaeh adequate care to stop the abuse he witnessed the day she died. During the toddler's medical emergency, he did not call for help. According to prosecutors, Gardner may have helped precipitate the child’s death by folding her body and placing her inside a suitcase, where she was deprived of oxygen.
“He was an eye- and ear-witness to that child being severely beaten and never reported it,” Tracy said. She later told jurors his actions after he believed Nevaeh was dead were “grotesquely below the standard of care for a reasonable person” in that situation.
Margaret Lagatutta, Gardner’s defense attorney, described him as a devoted father who worked multiple jobs, including at plants in New Orleans, to provide for his relatives. She said he raised Nevaeh from infancy and regarded her as his own daughter.
Lagattuta conceded Gardner's guilt on the obstruction charge, but told jurors there was nothing to show he had any specific intent to kill Nevaeh, arguing he wouldn't intentionally hurt the girl because he loved her. According to a defense attorney, he was simply trying to cover up for Cardwell, who was pregnant with his unborn child, and even tried to take all the blame during the subsequent criminal investigation but police wouldn't allow it.
“He’s not a coldhearted killer because he panicked,” Lagatutta said. “We’re not saying Kegan didn’t lie. But lying does not make you guilty of murder. … His intention for lying was to protect his family.”
According to testimony, Cardwell was in the bathroom preparing to go to work for the day, when Nevaeh picked up her mom’s contact lenses and ripped one, police said. A livid Cardwell then struck her daughter in the torso with a closed fist.
Arrest records go on to say that Nevaeh fell backward and hit her head on a cabinet before her mother “forcefully grabbed” her and took her to another room. Gardner later told police that from the next room, it sounded like “two adults fighting.”
Cardwell unleashed a profanity-laced tirade and shouted at her toddler daughter like she “was a grown woman,” Cardwell’s younger brother said, relaying information from Gardner’s two children who were in the apartment.
When Neveah emerged from room, she was crying and had a large bruise on her forehead. Gardner’s children told investigators their father hugged and tried to console the girl. The family then loaded up into their car and went about their day. Gardner drove Cardwell to work, and the two older children headed off to school.
Gardner returned to the Belaire apartment with Nevaeh, her 3-year-old sister and 11-month-old brother. He told Baton Rouge police Neveah complained of a stomach ache and refused to eat when he tried to feed the young children later that morning. He told her to lay down on the couch, and she fell asleep. When he tried to awaken her later, Nevaeh was unresponsive even when he gently slapped her face. He said she had bubbles in her mouth, her face had begun to turn blue, and she had no pulse. He lifted her arm, and the little girl was so limp that her limb fell back onto the couch.
Gardner performed CPR in an attempt to resuscitate Nevaeh, but she remained unconscious. He told officers he “freaked out” and packed the child in the suitcase to cover up what his girlfriend had done.
He put Neveah in the trunk of the vehicle, loaded the two other children in the back seat and headed toward Slidell, where he grew up. Gardner’s attorney said he drove to the southern banks of the Pearl River on the Mississippi side of the state line, a place his grandfather took him crab fishing as a child.
According to prosecutors, he left the two young children in the car while he hiked more than a half-mile up a trail and buried Nevaeh in a makeshift grave beneath trees along the river’s banks.
License plate readers tracked Gardner’s car to southern Mississippi and alerted authorities to the fact that he wasn’t home when Nevaeh vanished, as he initially reported. He was questioned five times over the course of four days and eventually admitted to disposing of the child’s remains.
Assistant DA Kathleen Barrios Heap, who also prosecuted the case, told jurors it will never be known if Gardner could have saved Neveah's life by taking her to get medical help. But she said he became criminally liable when he took no action to intervene after witnessing the abuse, then took steps to conceal Cardwell's alleged crime.
"This young child was killed by outrageous amounts of violence inflicted upon her," Barrios Heap explained to jurors to close out the trial. "Even if you don't believe he dealt the fatal blow, he is concerned — he is a principal to the (underlying) crimes of second-degree cruelty to a juvenile."