BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – Lanaya Cardwell testified in her own defense, continuing to deny that she hurt her child, Nevaeh Allen, and maintaining that she only popped the child on the hand during the morning interaction in question.
Cardwell is charged with second-degree cruelty to juveniles. Another witness testified on Thursday that she saw Cardwell hit Nevaeh in the stomach. When the witness first told law enforcement about that interaction in 2021, she described Cardwell hitting Nevaeh in the stomach “like a drum.”
Cardwell said in court that she “would never harm her child.” She said she took care of Gardner’s other children like her own, though they weren’t hers. When asked why another witness said she hit Nevaeh in the stomach, she said the only thing she could assume is that the witness was trying to protect her dad, the co-defendant who is already convicted of the child’s murder…