John Jefferson
Inset: Bethany Fleming (Allen County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The apartment complex where Fleming attacked her son with a hammer (Google Maps).
An Indiana woman may spend some time behind bars, though not in state prison, after she formally admitted to legal culpability over a hammer attack that nearly killed her 10-year-old son.
In October 2023, Bethany Joy Fleming, 33, was arrested on a charge of attempted murder and neglect of a dependent resulting in serious bodily injury. After allegedly hitting her son in the head with the hammer, the defendant attempted to kill herself with a knife.
The incident was tersely recounted in a harrowing emergency call.
“So I tried to kill him, I think I killed him, and I stabbed myself,” the mother allegedly told 911 dispatchers. “Please my name is Bethany.”
On Oct. 3, 2023, officers with the Fort Wayne Police Department arrived at the Tyler Terrace Apartments on Ralph Avenue in Fort Wayne, which is located some 120 miles northeast of Indianapolis.
As Law&Crime previously reported, first responders located Fleming and her son, both of whom were said to be suffering from “life threatening injuries,” and quickly turned the scene over to the police department’s homicide unit. The woman was initially transported to a nearby hospital for medical treatment and then taken into custody.
Police found the boy in bed, screaming and rolling from side to side.
Fleming had previously expressed a belief to emergency dispatchers that someone was coming to her home to take her and her son away and sell them into a sex trafficking ring, according to court records, saying she “tried to stop it and I hit him in the head with a hammer.”
Later, while bleeding profusely from the neck — by way of an apparent stab wound or wounds — Fleming allegedly reiterated her belief about sex slavery to law enforcement at the scene.
Then, when investigators quizzed the bewildered and bleeding mother if she had done anything to harm herself or her 10-year-old boy, Fleming allegedly responded that she had struck her child in the head with a hammer, because “she thought this was the only way.”
“I hit my baby,” the distraught defendant allegedly told officers.
The boy was diagnosed with a fractured skull as well as a bleed on or near his brain as a result of the hammer attack. This child’s condition was initially listed as critical and life-threatening. Doctors were unsure if the child would survive, but he is still alive as of this writing.
In exchange for prosecutors dropping the more severe charge, Fleming pleaded guilty to one count of guilty by way of mental illness to a level 3 felony of neglect of a dependent, according to a plea agreement obtained by Law&Crime.
In sum, Fleming’s total sentence would be 12 years, with seven of those years suspended, three years to be spent in Allen County Corrections Residential Services, and two years in home detention.
The plea deal was offered by the Allen County Prosecutor’s Office and accepted by the defendant on Monday. The agreement, however, is not set in stone; Allen Superior Court Judge David Zent will reject or accept the plea deal during a sentencing hearing slated for Sept. 30.
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