A Crawfordsville man was sentenced Friday to 30 years in the Indiana Department of Corrections for his part in a 2019 neglect case that left his girlfriend’s infant daughter seriously and permanently injured.
Dylan T. Myers, 30, was found guilty of neglect of a dependent resulting in catastrophic injury following a three-day jury trial in late October in Montgomery Circuit Court. A jury of seven women and five men found Myers guilty of neglect, a level 1 felony that carries a sentencing range of 20-40 years. The jury found him not guilty on two lesser felony counts of aggravated battery that inflicts injury that causes serious permanent disfigurement and battery with serious bodily injury to a person under age 14.
At the beginning of Friday’s sentencing hearing, public defender Bryan Donaldson asked the court to set aside the jury’s verdict because his client was found not guilty on the battery charges, and that it was “inconceivable” that the neglect conviction should stand in the absence of a battery conviction.
Montgomery County Prosecutor Joe Buser countered that Myers was in a position to care for the child and the jury did convict him on the most serious of the three charges.
Judge Harry Siamas ruled there was sufficient evidence presented during the trial to support the jury’s decision, and denied the defense motion.
In handing out a sentence, Siamas pointed to Myers’s criminal history as an aggravating factor in the case. Myers was found guilty in 2014 in Marion County of domestic violence involving his then wife and received a one-year sentence. He served 20 days in jail and the remainder of his sentence on probation. In 2017, Myers was convicted in Boone County of neglect of a dependent as a level 6 felony and sentenced to 2 1/2 years. He served six days in jail and the rest of the sentence on probation. He was ordered to complete counseling and anger management classes in connection with those cases.
Siamas noted that the Boone County case and the current case in Montgomery County are “strikingly similar.” He noted that in the Boone County case, Myers was found guilty of neglect after his girlfriend’s toddler suffered injuries while in his care and in the absence of the child’s mother. Those injuries sent that child to Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis for treatment.
Siamas said the outcome for the toddler was vastly different than the outcome for Charlie Marshall, the daughter of his current girlfriend, Megan Marshall. In August 2019, three-month-old Charlie Marshall suffered physical abuse that caused a brain injury, retinal hemorrhaging and rib fractures. She was transported to Riley Hospital for treatment and spent six weeks there in a medically-induced coma.
A jury determined Myers should be held accountable for the child’s condition because she was in his care when the injuries presented themselves. Megan Marshall arrived at the apartment as her child was beginning to have seizures and difficulty breathing.
At 3 1/2, Charlie Marshall continues to take medication to suppress seizure activity, has trauma-induced epilepsy and is severely developmentally delayed as a result of the injuries she sustained as an infant. She attends regular therapy sessions and is enrolled in a specialized preschool program.
She resides with her biological father, Nathan White, and two half-siblings, ages 5 and 6. Her father and her medical care providers testified during the trial that she will require assistance throughout her life and will likely be unable to live independently.
Buser told the court that it is by the grace of God and the immediate medical care she received at the local hospital and at Riley that allowed Charlie Marshall to survive.
Megan Marshall is facing felony abuse and neglect charges in relation to this incident. Her case is still pending. A jury trial is slated for March 2023. She and Myers are engaged and have a one-year-old child together. That child and Marshall’s five-year-old twins from a previous relationship are in the care of Marshall’s mother. Myers has one other child from a previous relationship, but did not have custody of that child.
Myers maintains his innocence, telling the court during Friday’s hearing that he wouldn’t hurt Charlie or any of his children. He believes his sister, Destiny Myers, who had been caring for Charlie Marshall and her own son that day at Marshall’s apartment, is to blame.
“I wasn’t in charge of Charlie, Destiny was,” he told the judge. “Destiny put me in that situation because she knew what she had done ... This whole situation is baffling to me.”
Destiny Myers has not been charged in connection with this case.
Myers plans to appeal the conviction and the sentence. He asked the court for continued legal representation by a public defender.
