In the late summer of 2018, two-year-old Jayla Miller was shot in a Polk Street home in Gary, Indiana. Emergency crews found Jayla with a gunshot wound to the head on the evening of September 4 and she was taken first to a local hospital and then airlifted to a children’s hospital in Chicago. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office confirmed she died the next morning.

Initial inquiries could not immediately determine whether the wound was self-inflicted, accidental, or intentional. Two adults at the residence were briefly held for questioning, and neighbors said police had been called to that house before for incidents involving drugs and a firearm. Court records later stated Jayla had been in a bedroom where a loaded handgun and narcotics were left unsecured.

Jayla’s mother, Dashana Fowler, was arrested and charged with neglect of a dependent resulting in death; she later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of neglect of a dependent resulting in bodily injury and received a three-year prison sentence. The plea included a provision that Fowler would testify against her former boyfriend, who was accused of owning the firearm that fired the shot.

Did anyone in Gary at the time have information about the household on Polk Street or the events of September 4, 2018?