Editor’s note: This article contains descriptions of child abuse. If you suspect a child is being abused or neglected, call the Indiana Department of Child Services’ Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline at 1-800-800-5556. The hotline is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Three days before Christmas.
At least that’s when police were called.
In a bedroom inside a home on the city’s south side, all 7-year-old Kayden Gavarrete had was a small couch, a dog cage, and a futon bed frame with a Bluey sleeping bag and pillow. His frail body was found in that room on Dec. 22 by Indianapolis Metropolitan Police, who were called to the South Pershing Avenue home by the boy’s father.
It’s unclear how long he was dead, but the coroner noted rigor mortis was setting in. Kayden was found burned, bruised and malnourished.
The boy’s father, Kevin Gavarrete, and his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Julia Sizemore, are facing preliminary charges of neglect resulting in death. The couple have dated for three years and have two daughters under 2 years old. At the time of Kayden’s death, they weren’t together, but Sizemore sometimes stayed at the home with Kayden.
A probable cause affidavit filed in the case gives horrifying details into Kayden’s final weeks alive and his death has enraged those who felt denied access to make sure the boy was OK.
“(Kevin) kept him away from his mother’s side of the family, unfortunately,” said Jessica Ryan, one of Kayden’s great aunts on his mother’s side. The boy’s mother, Tamara Mason, died in May 2022.
For many of Mason’s relatives, her death marked the last time they would see Kayden alive.
Photo of Kayden Gavarette
Kayden adored and missed his mother, Ryan said. In the hours before his death, Kayden told Sizemore that “he was going to see his mom,” she later recounted to investigators.
“They were very close,” Ryan said. “She was a very good mother to Kayden.”
Ryan said her family did not learn about the abuse Kayden was facing until it was too late. The boy was homeschooled and had been since the beginning of the school year, his father told police.
Kayden: 2 arrested after 7-year-old boy found dead in Indianapolis home
Multiple bruises, lacerations and scabs
At 3:42 p.m. Dec. 22, police were called to the 1300 block of South Pershing Avenue. According to court records, they knocked on the door of a home and waited 1-2 minutes for a response.
Gavarrete answered and said he needed help fast.
In the bedroom, Kayden was lying face-up on the floor. Within minutes medics had pronounced the boy dead at the scene and noticed abrasions and darkening on his face. The father told police Kayden didn’t have any medical issues and the last time he saw the boy alive was around 9 or 10 p.m. the night before. According to court records, 30-45 minutes before calling police, Gavarrete knocked on his son’s door and found him unresponsive.
Later on, while police were at the scene, Gavarrete’s sister arrived at the home.
She told them Gavarrete cut contact with her years ago and she hadn’t seen Kayden in that time. She’s never met Sizemore but sent her messages trying to get her to explain what happened. She denied knowing anything about how the boy died.
Detectives immediately noticed Kayden had multiple bruises, lacerations, scabs and what appeared to be small burn marks on his face and body. He also appeared to be extremely malnourished and severely underweight.
According to court records, the Marion County Coroner’s Office conducted an external exam of Kayden, noting he had rigor mortis in his jaw and head, but not anywhere else on his body. The examiner also pointed out to detectives bruising on the boy’s stomach, legs and feet. He had multiple scratches, cuts and abrasions across his body varying in different lengths and depths.
‘Some whoopings’ as a form of discipline
Photo of Kayden Gavarette
While being interviewed by detectives, Gavarrete said he just started a new job and worked an overnight 12-hour shift. He and Kayden were the only ones who lived in the home and Sizemore occasionally stayed with them.
The last time Kayden went to see a doctor was more than a year ago, according to the father. He thought Kayden weighed about 50 pounds at that doctor’s visit but told police in the days before his death the boy weighed about 30 pounds.
Related: Kids could be sleeping in your local DCS office. Here’s how often it happens in Indiana.
Kayden had been sick for about a month, the father told police, not wanting to eat or drink anything. He had to force-feed the boy. About three weeks ago, Kayden was acting out and Gavarrete believed he had been drinking chemicals because the bottles were becoming empty, but he never saw Kayden ingesting them. The types of chemicals were not specified in the arrest affidavit.
When shown photos of Kayden’s body at the scene, Gavarrete said Kayden had caused the marks and bruises during the past couple of weeks while throwing tantrums and falling to the ground. He planned to take Kayden to a hospital to get him evaluated but was afraid of what the medical staff would think.
He told police he would do “some whoopings” as a form of discipline, but when asked about the burn marks, he believed Kayden would sleep near heater vents in his room. The coroner later told investigators a heater could cause some of the injuries, but not all of them, police noted in their affidavit.
‘Acting weird around her girls’
Sizemore was brought in for questioning by police the same day.
She said her daughters moved out of the house because Kayden started “acting weird around her girls,” when they would spend time at Gavarrete’s home. She had planned to get help for him because she believed the 7-year-old had a mental illness and or at least ADHD. After all, he couldn’t seem to sit still.
“Kayden was a very hyper child, but he was happy and loving when he wanted to be,” Sizemore said, according to court documents. She told police he didn’t like taking showers, didn’t eat any food and would only drink liquids.
She was the one who took Kayden to his last doctor’s appointment about a year and a half ago and remembers him weighing 45 pounds.
When shown photos of Kayden’s body at the scene, Sizemore said she had told Gavarrete to take him to a hospital but the father refused. She also said she’d never seen him hit Kayden and that the boy would fall and throw temper tantrums injuring himself.
Detectives asked why she never took Kayden to a hospital and Sizemore said she “voiced her concerns but did not want to get into (Gavarrete’s) personal business.”
When asked if she would take her daughters to a hospital if they looked how Kayden did, she told police she would.
Boy made to ‘stand in a corner all day’ as punishment
One family member who spoke with police told them Sizemore had called on Dec. 22 and said Kayden had been drinking chemicals the day before his death that left him unable to move his legs. He stayed in his room and Sizemore said Gavarrete felt Kayden was lying, the relative told police.
When Sizemore went to his room at about 2 p.m. Dec. 22, she found the boy bleeding from his nose and mouth and yelled for Gavarrete. The father felt Kayden was cold and laid on a heater to warm him up.
Gavarrete told Sizemore to take their daughters and leave the home in fear of DCS taking them away, which is when she fled to a hotel, according to the affidavit.
A family member who lived with Gavarrete earlier this year told police he never saw the boy being struck — punishments usually meant the boy would “stand in a corner all day” — but he could tell Kayden was scared of his father and Sizemore.
Often the family member would feed Kayden because the boy was “always hungry,” which angered the couple, according to the affidavit. The relative also bought the boy a bed but said he would still sleep on the floor.
Over the past two years, relatives of the boy’s mother tried to visit Kayden, but communication between Gavarrete and Mason’s family dried up.
“Me and my sister were wanting to see him and she was trying to make contact with Kevin again,” Ryan told IndyStar. “We thought we were making progress.”
Jade Jackson is a Public Safety Reporter for the Indianapolis Star. You can email her at Jade.Jackson@IndyStar.com and follow her on X, formally Twitter @IAMJADEJACKSON. Public Safety Reporter, Noe Padilla contributed to this article.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Court docs: Indiana boy, 7, had burns and drank chemicals before death