Angel Lovely and Nicholas Bergdoll face felony neglect charges after Lovely's 4-year-old son, Malichi, was found dead in a cluttered basement closet in Indianapolis. The boy, who had cerebral palsy and hydrocephalus and could not walk, talk or feed himself, was discovered unresponsive on March 23. Court records detail siblings' accounts of him being routinely kept there.
Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers responded to a home on Monticello Drive at 4:25 p.m. on March 23 for an unresponsive 4-year-old boy. First responders found Angel Lovely, 37, performing CPR on her son, Malichi Lovely. Emergency personnel transported him to Riley Children's Health, where he was pronounced dead soon after arrival. The Marion County Coroner's Office has not yet determined the cause and manner of death, according to WXIN reporting. Court documents describe the basement closet, filled with Christmas decorations, as a place where Malichi often slept and was kept. He was found with blood on his mouth, shirt, pillow and blanket. Investigators noted he had been placed in the closet the night before his death. One sibling reported hearing gagging noises from the closet that morning before school, though Lovely told police she was unaware. A daughter who returned home later described opening the door to see blood from Malichi's mouth and his eyes rolled back. Malichi's three older siblings told detectives their mother kept him in the closet and did not pay attention to him, referring to it as the 'little room' where he was 'trapped.' Nicholas Bergdoll, 36, Lovely's boyfriend of a few months, told investigators, 'I'm not going to tell her how to f—in' raise her kids,' and claimed he was asleep in the basement and unaware of any distress. Lovely explained she sometimes wheeled the nonverbal boy into the closet with the door cracked when he screamed, to take a moment to breathe. Records show Malichi had prior medical neglect issues, including being underweight and malnourished; he was briefly removed from her care in 2024 before custody was restored. Lovely and Bergdoll remain in Marion County Jail awaiting their next court appearance on March 30.