An Ohio neighborhood is finding it hard to accept a cheerleader just taken off house arrest after burying her newborn baby in the backyard.
Brooke “Skylar” Richardson was placed on modified house arrest last month as she faces charges of murder and involuntary manslaughter. According to a report by the Daily Mail, she is accused of burying her newborn daughter in her own backyard last May, shortly after she gave birth.
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The judge ruled that Richardson would be confined to her house from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. Other than that, she is reportedly free to roam around town. She is tracked by a GPS monitor and random home visits, but for the past month she has been seen all over her home town.
This has stirred some of her neighbors into a frenzy, including one woman who reportedly saw Richardson out just two days after her hearing.
“My husband and I saw the teenage girl from Carlisle who killed and buried her own baby,” she wrote on Facebook. “She was at the restaurant we were at, talking on her iPhone. How is someone who is awaiting trial for aggravated murder not in jail?!”
Locals have taken photos of Richardson on her unlikely travels. One woman snapped a photo of her at a McDonald’s drive-thru. Others have seen her playing with her dog outside.
One woman in particular has obsessively tracked Richardson’s movements for the year since her alleged crime. The former cheerleader wears an electronic ankle monitor everywhere she goes, but many feel she still has too much freedom.
Richardson’s defense lawyers tried to block prosecutors from calling in medical staffers from an obstetrics-gynecology practice as witnesses. Richardson refused to give up her physician-patient privilege, though the prosecutors said that it doesn’t apply in this case. Ultimately, they were shot down, and the trial was delayed as they worked out a new strategy without that crucial piece of testimony.
Right now, three’s no official timeline for the start of Richardson’s trial.
It was a doctor who tipped the police off about Richardson’s alleged crime. She visited the practitioner just a few weeks before her due date. Not long after, authorities uncovered the baby’s remains.
Richardson carried her baby to full term. She reportedly gave birth in her bathroom at home just a few days after her senior prom in May of 2017. Prosecutors believe she buried the infant shortly afterward. County Prosecutor David Fornshell believed that Richardson and her parents, particularly her mother, were preoccupied with how their community would react to an out of wedlock teenage pregnancy.
“Skylar and her family, particularly her mother, were pretty obsessed with external appearances and how things appeared to the outside world,” he said in an early court date.
