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On Wednesday, August 8, 2007, a frantic mother dialed 911 & told the dispatcher that her daughter had fallen into the pool & was no longer breathing. She went on to say, Her lips are purple, what do I do? Water’s just coming out of her nose. Please hurry.
7-year-old Adrianna Hutto was immediately rushed to the hospital, but sadly, she was pronounced dead about an hour later. However, what seemed to be nothing more than a tragic accident quickly became a full-scale criminal case when Adrianna’s 6-year-old half-brother, AJ, began telling an entirely different version of events.
27-year-old Amanda Lewis was a single mother living in Esto, Florida, a tiny town with a population of only 361 that is situated in the panhandle of the state along the Alabama border. She lived in a modest three-bedroom home with her boyfriend, Alan Carnley, his teenage son & her two children, 6-year-old AJ & his half-sister, 7-year-old Adrianna. According to Amanda, their lives were very quiet & calm, exactly the way she loved it.
Amanda described Adrianna as a happy child who was very outgoing, hyper, headstrong like her & a bit of an attention-seeker. On the other hand, AJ was the exact opposite; he was quiet, calm & would happily play by himself for hours.
Adrianna Elaine Hutto was born on September 16, 1999. She was a spunky girl with a huge smile who was later diagnosed with ADHD (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). She was a bundle of energy & an absolute mirror-image of her mother down to her voice as well as her walk. She loved being the center of attention & she was an animated girl who spoke with confidence, always using her hands to tell a story.
According to Amanda, Adrianna had her share of struggles. Just before summer break, Amanda was contacted by Adrianna’s school to notify her that she had gotten into a fight with another little girl. After this incident, she ended up spending six days at a behavioral center. On another occasion, Amanda & her boyfriend, Alan, had been outside & when they came back in, Adrianna had pulled a knife on AJ. Despite being 7-years-old, she also had issues with wetting her pants.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007 was the last day their family of three spent together. Amanda left her night shift at Bonifay Nursing & Rehab where she worked as a nurse’s assistant & while the kids watched cartoons, she took a nap. Since school would be starting soon, they planned to go shopping for supplies, but since temperatures were scorching that day, nearly 100 degrees, the kids wanted to go swimming.
Amanda explained that since they were getting ready to leave, they wouldn’t be able to go swimming, but while she got ready, she allowed them to go outside to play for a few minutes. Six weeks earlier, they’d installed an above ground, inflatable pool that was 4-feet-deep & 18-feet wide. Since the kids were not allowed to go into the pool without adult supervision, Amanda stored the double-sided ladder that allowed them to climb in & out of it in a locked shed in the backyard to prevent the kids from going in by themselves.
As Amanda continued getting things together, AJ suddenly came into the house & told her that Adrianna was in the pool. She initially thought he meant that she was just near the pool rather than inside of it so she asked AJ to tell his sister to come inside.
As minutes continued to go by & the kids still hadn’t come inside, Amanda glanced out the window & saw AJ raking his hand across the water as if he was trying to grab his sister from the pool. She said that she immediately ran outside & saw her daughter lying face down in the water. As she pulled her out, she could see that her skin had a blueish, purple hue to it so she he started CPR & dialed 911.
When first responders arrived, they found Amanda sobbing uncontrollably & kneeling in the grass next to her daughter’s body next to the pool. There was a red wagon positioned at the side of the pool that Adrianna had likely used to climb into it. There was also a pan floating in the pool, something that was normally filled with water & set on the ground so they could rinse their feet prior to swimming.
As first responders took over, Adrianna was soaking wet, but she was still warm to the touch & as the paramedic began CPR, he thought he may have gotten her pulse back. She was airlifted to the nearest hospital & by the time Adrianna arrived, it wasn’t looking good. Dr. Linda Fox, the ER doctor on staff at the time, indicated that she wasn’t breathing & she was limp & cold to the touch. Despite the medical staff’s best efforts of working on saving the young girl’s life for more than an hour, she only briefly regained a pulse. She was tragically pronounced dead at 5:05 pm.
Amanda said that when the doctor broke the news to her, she immediately got sick to her stomach. She kissed & hugged her daughter, knowing that it would be the last time she would ever see her.
The investigation into Adrianna’s death was swift & quickly concluded that she’d simply approached the pool, fell in over the side, hit her head at the bottom & sadly drowned. According to statistics, 945 children within the United States die from drowning each year. Since there were no indications of foul play, that seemed to be the end of the case.
However, only hours later, police were contacted by Adrianna & AJ’s grandfather, Charles Burns, with very concerning information. AJ, who, other than Amanda, had been the sole eyewitness of Adrianna’s death, told his grandfather, Mamma dunked my sister. When investigators later asked him to clarify what he meant, he said, Drowning.
As 6-year-old AJ continued to tell investigators what had gone on that day, he said that his mom had gotten mad at Adrianna for playing with window cleaning solution. She sprayed it all around the house & made a big mess. He said that his mom grabbed Adrianna & threw her into the pool. As soon as she hit the water, Adrianna began screaming, so Amanda held her face underwater, pushing her down so she wasn’t able to scream.
The problem was, AJ’s answers kept changing when investigators asked the same questions again. When he was asked if he truly saw everything that he described, he said no, that if he had seen everything, he would be in trouble. Although, in later questioning, he said he had seen the entire attack. He explained that he’d been hiding near the front of the house next to a garbage can that was near a tree.
Confronted with her son’s story, Amanda stuck to her original story that Adrianna had fallen into the pool & drowned.
Faced with AJ’s claims, authorities began digging deeper into Amanda Lewis’ life to better understand who she was. They learned that when Adrianna was only 6-months-old, Amanda had been called to serve in the National Guard, forcing her to leave her young daughter in the care of family members.
It also came to light that Amanda & Adrianna had a difficult relationship; according to Amanda, Adrianna was very disobedient & often refused to do what she was told which escalated into big arguments.
When police entered the family’s home, they found it in disarray & they were immediately alarmed by the overwhelming stench of urine in the kids’ bedroom. It was so intense that they struggled to remain in the room. AJ & Adrianna’s mattresses were bare, lacking sheets & there were absolutely no toys inside the home.
When police confronted Amanda about the lack of toys, she explained that she’d taken them away for a week as a punishment & they were stored outside in the shed. However, when investigators checked the same shed that held the pool ladder, there wasn’t a single toy to be found & Amanda later admitted that she’d given them away to a charity.
When investigators spoke with Dr. Renee Fox, the emergency room physician who’d desperately tried to save Adrianna’s life, she said that when she was tasked with telling Amanda that her daughter hadn’t survived, she stood expressionless with a cold & distant demeanor. This reaction was in stark contrast to the emotional 911 call that Amanda made earlier that day as well as the understandable sobbing when first responders arrived at her house. The drastic change in reaction seemed too strange to overlook. Just after learning that her daughter died, Dr. Fox overheard Amanda asking where the vending machine was.
According to family members, Amanda was a generally distant, cold & hard to read person. However, they maintained that she loved her children & she would have never harmed her daughter. When they asked her to take a polygraph test, she passed, but investigators knew they needed to keep digging.
A specialist was brought in to speak with AJ & as they reviewed the footage of his initial interview, they noted the many inconsistencies in his story. But they also realized that officers were not experienced in interviewing young children.
When the specialist interviewed AJ, he told the same story again, but the location of where he said he had been when his sister was drowned by their mother had changed. This was a red flag for investigators & they began to wonder if maybe someone had influenced him to tell this story.
They began to look into AJ’s grandfather, Charles Burns, who was not his biological grandfather, having married Amanda’s mother. Charles had arrived about 30 minutes after everything happened & he had been alone with AJ for about fifteen minutes.
When officers asked Charles what he & AJ talked about while they were together, he said he’d simply reminded AJ how important it was to tell the truth. Investigators came to find that Amanda & her stepfather often argued & it was Charles’ opinion that she wasn’t a very good mother. He accused her of allowing the children to go hungry for hours & disciplining Adrianna in an abusive manner.
Investigators also came to find that Adrianna hadn’t been the first child that Amanda lost. At only 17-years-old, she gave birth to her first baby, a son she named Alex. According to her mom, even though she’d been so young, Amanda was a loving, attentive mom. However, when Alex had been only 1 year & 4 months old, he stopped breathing in his sleep & passed away. The autopsy determined that he suffered a seizure that led to his death, but this knowledge only fueled suspicions against her.
Just about one month after Adrianna’s death, Amanda was arrested in September 2007 & charged with first-degree murder. She was offered a plea deal for a lesser charge of manslaughter that would not only avoid a trail, but she would be sentenced to ten years in prison rather than the possibility of life in prison should she be found guilty of first-degree murder. However, she declined this offer & remained adamant that she was not guilty.
Her defense team maintained that she was an innocent woman who couldn’t be convicted of a crime that she didn’t commit. Meanwhile, the prosecution had only a 6-year-old boy’s version of events to go on. Both AJ & Dr. Fox were the prosecution’s star witnesses.
Six months after his sister’s death, in February 2008, a now 7-year-old AJ, who was in first grade, was brought into the courtroom to testify against his own mother. AJ hadn’t seen his mom in six months & while he sat on the stand, he was asked if his mother was in the courtroom. Despite the fact that Amanda was sitting not too far in front of him, he didn’t notice her. When he was asked if his mom was in the courtroom, he said that she wasn’t because she was in jail. When he did finally see her, AJ broke down in tears.
Despite his tears, AJ was able to quickly compose himself as he pointed to pictures of his backyard to demonstrate where things happened on the day that his sister drowned. He indicated that his mom had pulled his red wagon from the tree line over to the side of the pool. He said he was standing by the trees at the front of the house when his mom started attacking Adrianna, but he eventually moved closer to the side of the house.
After his sister was taken away in an ambulance, AJ said he went to his grandma & Pa Chuck’s house. On his way to their house, AJ said that he told his Pa Chuck what his mom had done to his sister, which is why he was taken to the police department.
According to the testimony of Alan Carnley, Amanda’s boyfriend, Adrianna had gotten into trouble a number of times in the weeks before her death. He said that when she misbehaved, she would either be put in time out or be whipped with a belt.
During the trial, jury members were shown autopsy reports & photos that depicted fingerprint-shaped bruises on Adrianna’s forehead, cheeks & chin. This supported AJ’s story that his mother had drowned his sister. When Dr. Fox was asked how the bruises might have been inflicted, she demonstrated by placing her hand on her face in the same motion as AJ had previously done, thus reinforcing that she was responsible for her daughter’s death.
The prosecution painted a picture of a cold, detached mother who rarely cleaned her house, forced her children to live in a filthy, urine-filled space with no toys, other than a pool & a red wagon.
A co-worker of Amanda’s testified that three months before Adrianna’s death, Amanda had been very upset after Adrianna wrote all over the interior of her car with a permanent marker that had been in the console of the car, writing the word, Loser. As Amanda stood at the nurse’s station, she said that she was so mad that she could kill her daughter. Although she admitted that she said this, she was firm on the fact that she only did so out of frustration in the heat of the moment. She also admitted that she had never truly bonded with Adrianna.
When Amanda took the stand, she maintained that her daughter had died in a tragic drowning accident that she had no part in.
The prosecution wrapped up the case by highlighting what AJ described, something that matched the bruises found on Adrianna’s face. They also focused on the unbearable smell of urine in the children’s bedroom, the lack of toys in the home as well as Amanda’s coworker’s testimony of the damning statement she made about killing her daughter.
Four days into the trial, the jury broke for deliberation. After two hours of deliberation, they returned with a guilty verdict & Amanda was subsequently sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole as well as 30 years for child abuse. Two years later in 2010 she made an appeal which was denied.
AJ was later adopted & ultimately changed his name for privacy purposes. He is said to be working as a firefighter & at 24-years-old, he maintains that what he told the jury during his testimony was the absolute truth, saying, I just told them what I saw, word for word.
AJ is now married & has no contact with a now 45-year-old Amanda Lewis, someone he refuses to refer to as his mom. He indicated that the home he was adopted into was a night & day difference than the one he was born into. He said that he & his sister had both been physically abused, sometimes for reasons they didn’t even understand.
Amanda Lewis remains behind bars at Homestead Correctional Institution for Women south of Miami, where she’ll spend the rest of her life. Adrianna was a 7-year-old little girl who should have had her whole life in front of her & instead, her life ended at the hands of the person who should have only loved & protected her.
References:
- ABC News: What AJ saw: A mother’s fate hinged on 7-year-old’s testimony
- Criminal: The death of Adrianna Hutto
- Medium: The sad case of AJ: The son who testified against his own mother
- UNILAD: Man details traumatizing moment he testified at 7 years old that he saw his mom drown his sister
- Court TV: FL V. Amanda Lewis: Pool drowning murder trial
- YouTube: Amanda Lewis trial: Alan Carnley’s first testimony
- Deccan Chronicle: US mother kills daughter for being naughty, sentenced to life
- Court TV: FL V. Lewis: Bay Medical staff testimonies
- Children’s Safety Network: The facts on childhood drowning
- Facebook: Kendall Rae: Adriann Hutto: How did it come to this?
