John Jefferson
Left: Jeremy Sweet; Right: Emma Sweet (Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Office)
An Indiana man will spend the next four decades behind bars for the role he played in the drowning death of his 2-year-old daughter.
Jeremy Sweet, 41, pleaded guilty to one count each of neglect of a dependent resulting in death and a habitual offender enhancement for drug crimes on Tuesday in Bartholomew County. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the first offense and 10 years in prison for the second. The court assessed the sentences to run consecutively.
Emma Sweet, the victim, likely died sometime on Thanksgiving Day in 2021 — after her father accidentally drove his truck into a river.
According to an affidavit of probable cause obtained by Indianapolis-based ABC affiliate WRTV, the father and daughter were last seen together on Nov. 24, 2021 — and reported missing the next day.
Sweet was later rescued from his truck after being discovered by duck hunters on Nov. 26, 2021. He told investigators he had taken a friend to work, got lost in some fields, and took a wrong turn on a dirt road, resulting in the truck falling into the east fork of the White River.
Where the truck was submerged, the river was between three to five feet deep, law enforcement determined.
Emma’s body was found by divers days later.
During an interview with detectives the day after the grim discovery, the since-condemned man admittedly used both marijuana and methamphetamine that fateful Thanksgiving Day, according to court records obtained by Indianapolis-based Fox affiliate WXIN.
Multiple accounts for what happened to Emma soon followed. None of those accounts were the same, according to law enforcement.
In one version, the father had dropped his daughter off somewhere before the truck went into the water. Then, he changed his tune, investigators say, admitting the girl was with him during the crash.
“Jeremy said that water was coming into the truck, so he put Emma on the hood or roof of the truck,” the affidavit filed in the case reads. “Jeremy said that he and Emma fell into the water.”
Later, Sweet said the two got on the truck’s roof — where he held his daughter for a while — but fell into the water. Then, Sweet said he put his daughter on the roof alone and eventually fell asleep. When Sweet woke up, his daughter was nowhere to be found, he said.
Emma was last seen alive on the roof of the pickup truck, “yelling for her mom,” Sweet told police, according to The Indianapolis Star.
Sweet took culpability for his actions, apologized to his ex-wife for losing their daughter, and broke down emotionally during his sentencing hearing, according to a courtroom report by The Republic.
“There’s nothing I can say to change what has happened,” he said, sobbing. “But I swear to God on everything I love that I’m so sorry.”
Law enforcement later determined that Sweet had been at a casino in nearby Shelbyville all night with two friends on the day before the crash. He returned to Columbus on Thanksgiving Day and picked up his daughter because her mother had to go to work.
Police doubted that Sweet had ever been lost.
Surveying the crash site, investigators found one of the truck’s windshield wipers bent. Then-Bartholomew County Sheriff Matt Myers said it looked “as if someone had been hanging on it.”
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