An Indiana mother and her boyfriend have been charged with neglect resulting in death after her 4-year-old son — who had multiple serious medical diagnoses and could not walk, talk, or feed himself — was found unresponsive and died shortly after being rushed to Riley’s Children’s Health in Indianapolis.
Indianapolis Police were called to the scene just before 4:30 p.m. on Monday by Angel Lovely’s boyfriend, Nicholas Bergdoll, the Indianapolis Star reports.
A probable cause statement said the wheelchair-bound boy — Malichi Lovely — had been rolled into a closet beneath the basement stairs the night before his death. Lovely told police he was awake around 9 a.m. that morning as she got her other children off for school. One of those children told detectives he heard Malichi gagging before he left for school, but Lovely said the child didn’t tell her about it.
After getting the children away, Lovely fell asleep around 10 a.m. and slept until one of her daughters came home from school in the afternoon. When she woke up from her day-long nap, she told the girl to go talk to Malachi — something the girl said she did frequently anyway to keep him from crying because “he thought he was alone.”
The girl went down to the basement, opened the closet door, and turned on the light. She immediately saw blood coming from Malichi’s mouth and his eyes rolled back.
Bergdoll told police he was in the basement while Malichi was in the closet — also sleeping — and hadn’t heard any choking or gagging. He said he didn’t know how long the child had been in the closet.
Lovely told police that she only ever put in there for a few minutes when he would scream and then take him back out again. She did not explain why he’d been there all day while she slept.
Malichi’s three older siblings told investigators that he was frequently put in the basement closet. “He’s trapped in the little room,” one child said. “Mom does not take care of [him] as much.”
The court documents also quoted the children saying “mom keeps him in the closet and does not pay attention to him.”
Lovely, 37, and Bergdoll, 36, denied neglecting the boy and had excuses ready for investigators. For his part, Bergdoll threw his girlfriend under the bus, saying they’d only been together a few months and he was “not going to tell her how to f****** raise her kids.”
Lovely said Malichi frequently had insomnia and would stay awake for days, making him an “overall cranky child.” She blamed the a hospital when he was listed as “failure to thrive” in 2024. She was also accused at that time of missing her son’s medical appointments, which she also blamed on the hospital for canceling the appointments and then not returning her calls when she tried to reschedule.
That was when the boy was temporarily removed from her custody and placed into foster care. A year later she was granted full custody again, against the advisement of DCS.
Malichi has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy, congenital hypertonia, hip dysplasia, spastic quadriplegia, epilepsy, aphagia, hearing loss, skin disorders, gastroenteritis, colitis, insomnia, GERD, hydrocephalus, and sleep apnea.
Lovely and Bergdoll both denied keeping Malichi in the closet “all the time.”
They are due in court on Monday.
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[Featured image: Angel Lovely and Nicholas Bergdoll/Marion County Sheriff’s Office]
