Mother of Girl Who Lost Legs Pleads Guilty

CROWN POINT, Ind. — A woman whose 9-year-old daughter lost her lower legs to frostbite after being trapped for days in an unheated apartment pleaded guilty Friday to felony child neglect.

Darlwin Britt, who has been held in the Lake County Jail since her arrest on Jan. 20, agreed to plead guilty to one count after prosecutors said they would drop two other felony counts of child neglect.

Under the plea agreement, Britt, 25, would be sentenced to 14 years in prison. But Lake County Superior Court Judge Richard Maroc said he has the option of suspending part of that sentence. He will make a decision at a May 27 hearing.

Britt took the stand only briefly during the hearing. She admitted that her daughter, Darlwin Carlisle, needed medical attention, yet she did not seek it.

Off the stand, Britt told Maroc that she was taking cocaine during the time in January that young Darlwin was forced to live in the unheated attic apartment. Otherwise, she gave no explanation for the incident.

The girl, described as a good student by her teachers and “very courageous” by hospital personnel, now lives with her great-grandmother in Gary, Ind. After her ordeal was publicized nationwide, at least $125,000 poured in to help pay her medical bills and future expenses.

She has learned to skip rope and roller skate on her artificial legs, therapists said at the time she was released from a Chicago hospital.

The girl was found in a freezing apartment in Gary on Jan. 18 by a construction worker who had been sent to board up the building after a mortgage foreclosure.

At the time, Jeff Griffin said he heard a child pleading for help, removed a refrigerator from the top of the stairway and kicked open a padlocked door to rescue the girl.