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Tina Byrd, 43, was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to neglect of a dependent and obstruction of justice in the Muncie, Indiana, case of 4-month-old Matthew Cheng, the second infant to die at her house in 11 weeks.

Byrd called 911 on the afternoon of Jan. 19, 2010, to report that Matthew was not breathing. She told Muncie police she had put him down for a nap on his back and found him unresponsive when she checked on him. "She called us about three in the afternoon and said she had put the baby down for a nap," Capt. Mark Vollmar said. "She was extremely distraught to the point where it was difficult to speak." Court records say Byrd started CPR before 911 was called, and a dispatcher kept coaching her through rescue breathing.

The Delaware County coroner said the autopsy showed no signs of trauma, foul play, abuse, neglect or shaken baby syndrome, and classified the death as sudden unexpected infant death with the cause undetermined. Eleven weeks earlier, on Nov. 3, 2009, 2-month-old John Wenninger had died while napping at the same house. That death was also ruled sudden unexpected infant death with an undetermined cause, and Byrd was never charged in it.

Investigators said Byrd's account of the second death did not hold up. They said she left the house about 2:15 p.m. to pick up a daughter from school and made another stop, and security cameras at a nearby pharmacy recorded her shopping for school supplies with her 19-year-old daughter for about 15 minutes. "From 2:30 to at least 2:55 that baby was left alone. There wasn't anyone else in that house except her pets," Vollmar said.

Police would not connect the absence to the death. "We are not ready to go there. We don't know what caused the death of Matthew Cheng. We are trying to get to the bottom of it," Vollmar said. Byrd and her daughter, Kassandra Byrd, were charged on Jan. 27, 2010. Neither was ever charged with causing either infant's death, and no charge was ever filed over the November death.

Tina Byrd admitted she had left the baby alone and had lied to investigators about where she was and how she positioned him for his nap. Kassandra Byrd pleaded guilty in October 2010 to one count of obstruction of justice for backing up her mother's original story.

Matthew's parents sued Byrd and Westminster Presbyterian Church of Muncie, where an associate pastor had recommended Byrd as a sitter. The suit said the family of the infant who died in November also attended the church and that the Chengs were never told about that death. The Indiana Court of Appeals ruled in August 2013 that the church owed the family no duty of care, and ordered the claims against it thrown out.