Friends defend teen on trial for killing newborn: 'I want her to get her life back'
Brooke Skylar Richardson was just 18 years old when she was arrested in 2017 and accused of killing her newborn baby girl and burying the child in her family’s backyard. Now awaiting trial, the teen has been ostracized by her community and denounced online by those following the case. But her friends are now coming to her defense, saying the entire town of Middletown, Ohio, have “all ganged up on her instead of sticking behind her.”
Police officers were tipped off to the possibility that Richardson had killed her newborn after getting a phone tip from a doctor in July 2017, according to Teen Vogue.
Just a few months earlier in April, her gynecologist had ordered a routine urine test when the teen visited his office seeking birth control pills, and informed her she was pregnant, which her family claims she hadn’t known.
But Richardson, who is now 19, reportedly told the doctor her mother was waiting for her and expecting a prescription, so he wrote her one and sent her on her way. When she returned for a refill that July, she saw a different gynecologist, who after reviewing her chart asked the recent Carlisle High School graduate how her baby was doing. According to her family, Richardson broke down and confessed that she’d given birth to a stillborn baby and buried it in her parent’s backyard without telling them what had happened.
Her parents said they later learned the girl had given birth on the bathroom floor on May 7, 2017 — just two days after her senior prom. Richardson said she waited hours for the newborn to show signs of life, then finally gave up and secretly buried the infant with some miniature roses in a hole in the ground. She had named her daughter Annabelle.
“She was just a kid, she was scared, she panicked, she didn’t know what to do,” Richardson’s friend Ashley told Teen Vogue. “I wouldn’t know what to do.”
Richardson’s best friend, Annie, said she didn’t know her friend was pregnant — and neither did the rest of their friends. On July 20, 2017, the truth came out when officers responded to the tip from the teen’s doctor and showed up at Richardson’s house.
The teen reportedly broke down and confessed to burying the baby, but insisted it was stillborn. An investigation followed, and in August 2017, a grand jury indicted Richardson, claiming her baby had been born alive but was killed before being buried. The newborn’s body had also been burned, according to a Local 12 News report. Richardson was charged with aggravated murder, involuntary manslaughter, endangering children, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse.
When the news broke, the community reportedly turned its back on the former cheerleader, who was scheduled to attend the University of Cincinnati to study psychology the following fall.
“People are camping outside her house and taking pictures of her,” Kiley Alcorn, a Carlisle High student, told the New York Post in 2018. “The way people are reacting to it, especially adults, and the whole situation is sad.”
Private Facebook groups condemning Richardson and seeking justice for baby Annabelle also started to crop up. The moderator of one group was allegedly one of the people who camped outside the teen’s family home, taking pictures of her to post online.
In the 18 months since her arrest, the teen’s friends have remained steadfast in their defense of her innocence. “[Richardson] knows that people are talking. The things that they are saying are not OK, she needs to not to believe them,” her best friend, Annie, told Teen Vogue, acknowledging that Richardson should have “told her mom or called the cops” after giving birth.
Richardson — known to her friends as Skylar — is on house arrest with a 9 p.m. curfew as she awaits trial. Her attorneys have filed appeals on her behalf, but on Wednesday, it was announced that the Ohio Supreme Court declined to accept the latest appeal. A trial is tentatively scheduled for Sept. 3.
For the time being, her friends say they wish the community would consider Richardson innocent until proven guilty, and give her the benefit of the doubt. “Nothing like this happens in Carlisle, so [the community] wanted to make it as crazy as possible,” Ashley told Teen Vogue. “They have this small-town mentality — they found out something bad happened with Skylar, so they all ganged up on her instead of sticking behind her.”
A fellow classmate, Kylie, agrees, and says Richardson is a good person who doesn’t deserve to be vilified. “If I was ever having problems — with anything — she would just be there for me, hear me talk about it forever and she would be on my side, no matter what,” Kylie said. “It’s really concerning for me that these people just make it a priority to harass Skylar and, like, do whatever they can to try to make her and her family’s lives miserable.”
“Her whole life is chaos right now, so I hope that our friendship — me, Annie and McKenzie — can be an escape for her,” Ashley added. “I want her to get her life back. She was supposed to be a college student this year. She was so excited about changing her major, finding a roommate — you know, stuff that every kid wants.”
The rest of the group agrees.
“She’s still the same Skylar,” Annie said. “She’s different because of the way that people have treated her … scared of the media, obviously, and the way they act toward her, and the mean people, but she is still herself, her sweet self.”
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