Mom Who Stabbed and Slit the Throats of Her 4 Young Children Gets Life Imprisonment

MEMPHIS, Tennessee – After a 5-year trial, a mother was sentenced to life in prison with parole after slitting the throats of 4 of her 5 children.

THE CRIME

On July 1, 2016, at around noon, Deputies with Shelby County Sheriff’s Office responded to a 911 call about a possible stabbing at Shanynthia Gardner’s home. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders found four children who appeared to have suffered “severe stab wounds” and “severe lacerations to the throat.” They were all pronounced dead on the scene.

Gardner’s oldest child, 7-year-old Dallen Clayton, was able to evade his mother’s attacks and made it safely out of their Memphis apartment near Cross Road and East Shelby Drive.

According to a report from CBS News, two of the children—Yahzi and Sya—were found in the living room. Yahzi was reportedly still in her baby carrier while Sya was positioned alongside the carrier. Tallen and Sahvi were both found in the same bedroom.

After escaping the apartment, Dallen was reportedly able to flag down a pedestrian and tell the man that his mother had just stabbed his sister, according to a police affidavit. That man later told police that right after he was approached by Dallen, he saw Gardner exit her apartment holding a large knife in one hand. He reportedly said that after she spotted him, she turned around and went back inside of her apartment.

THE PUNISHMENT

On Tuesday, Shanynthia Gardner, 34, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 51 years for the brutal slayings of her kids, all of whom were under the age of five, prosecutors announced.

THE PLEA

Judge Lammey in December presided over a non-jury bench trial, during which she rejected Gardner’s attempt to employ an insanity defense. Gardner’s attorneys and a doctor who evaluated Gardner in Dec. said she suffered from mental illness and did not comprehend what she was doing at the time of the 2016 killings. However, the judge said while he believes that Gardner has a mental illness, she was not insane during the time of the murders.

She insisted that Gardner was able to “appreciate the wrongfulness” of her actions when she repeatedly stabbed 4-year-old Tallen Gardner 3-year-old Sya Gardner, 2-year-old Sahvi Gardner, and 6-month-old Yahzi Gardner.

Judge Lammey found Gardner guilty on 20 criminal charges, including four counts of first-degree murder.

Gardner was sentenced to life for each of the first-degree murder charges and 15 years each for counts of aggravated child abuse, murder in the perpetration of aggravated child abuse, aggravated child neglect involving a deadly weapon, and murder in the perpetration of aggravated child neglect involving a deadly weapon. All of the sentences are to run concurrently.

Gardner who was 29-years-old at the time of the crime, has remained in custody since her initial arrest in 2016, which Lammey said will count towards her overall sentence. That means the earliest Gardner will be eligible to be released is 2068, when she’s 80-years-old.

The Shelby County District Attorney’s Office conceded that Gardner had a mental illness during the bench trial, but argued that she was still aware of what she was doing and that her conduct was wrong.

“Our position from day one is that she has a mental disease, but we’ve always felt that she could appreciate the wrongfulness of her actions,” Christensen said in December.

WHERE IS THE FATHER?

Following the horrific incident, the children’s father, and  Gardner’s ex husband, Martin Gardner, reportedly told investigators that his wife had been having a rough time in recent weeks. He reportedly said Shanynthia thought “someone is trying to harm her and her family.”

He told the Memphis Commercial Appeal, he said: ‘I just feel like she was going through something. When the doors close, you never know what a person is going through. It’s an act of evil. I don’t know what she’s got into.

‘Wonderful, sweet young lady. Very talented. She was an aspiring singer. She was very good at songwriting and had a voice. She was into modeling, anything that was in front a camera,’ he added.

‘She was a lovely lady. I don’t understand what’s going on right now.’

“It was important for us to get justice for Martin Gardner and his four beautiful children – Tallen, Sya, Sahvi, and Yahzi,” Christensen said. “We returned a photo album to him that was taken into evidence. He was very emotional and said that’s all he had left, but that he’s glad she can’t hurt any more children.”

What drew me to this story is that they courts turned down her plea of mental illness. Obviously she knew WHAT she was doing, but my heart tells me she wasn’t of sound mind.

Even more, so many people have multiple small kids without realizing the pressure and the constant need for attention, with the adult barely having time for themselves, drives many unsuspecting women crazy.  It doesn’t matter whether a woman is married or not. In this case the partner’s divorced and the mother was left to deal with the kids the majority of the time.

What are your thoughts?