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On May 2nd, 2023, at approximately 7:30 p.m., officers with the Village of Liberty Police Department responded to a 911 call for a child in cardiac arrest at the Knights Inn Motel on State Route 52 in the Village of Liberty.
Responding officers found a 16-month-old female child unconscious and unresponsive in the lobby of the motel. Despite the best efforts of emergency responders, the child was pronounced deceased at Garnet Medical Center – Catskills.
The Village of Liberty Police Department, along with the New York State Police and the Sullivan County District Attorney’s Office, immediately began an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the child’s death.
The parents of the toddler, Jimmie Luvert, 41, and Lisa Keitt, 26, both of Liberty, have been charged with criminally negligent homicide, a felony, and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, misdemeanors.
According to the criminal complaint, the two parents were allegedly smoking fentanyl in the presence of their children, the deceased 16-month-old and their three-month-old infant. The complaint alleges that the couple left the deadly narcotic unattended and accessible to the toddler on a table while they were, quote, “grossly impaired,” resulting in the child’s death.
In a court appearance at the Town of Liberty Court, both Jimmie Luvert and Lisa Keitt were indicted on charges of criminally negligent homicide and endangering the welfare of a child. Luvert was remanded to Sullivan County Jail without bail, while Keitt’s bail was set at $500,000 cash or $1,000,000 secured bond, or $2,000,000 partially secured bond. Both individuals will await further court proceedings while in custody.