About the only piece of evidence the prosecution didn’t have in the murder case against 20-year-old Patrick Fluker was an eyewitness testifying that he was seen shooting 29-year-old Tiffany Mendez in the head.Convicted of neglect of a dependent and sent to prison, a 25-year-old Fort Wayne woman now faces federal charges alleging she made false statements to the Social Security Administration.
A U.S. District Court grand jury in Fort Wayne indicted Amanda Alvather on Wednesday on a single count of making false statements, knowing that her son had been removed from her custody but continuing to receive supplemental security income from the Social Security Administration.
In July 2008, Alvather was arrested and charged in Allen Superior Court with neglect, about nine months after her three children were found living in squalor inside a south-central Fort Wayne home.
Her three children, ranging in age at the time from 10 months to 3 years, were found wearing soiled clothes and were “covered in filth, feces and smelled of urine,” according to court documents.
The children were all removed from the home and taken to Parkview Hospital. A 2-year-old boy, lethargic and disoriented, weighed only 13 pounds. The boy remained in the hospital for four days after having not received appropriate care for Down syndrome.
Alvather was sentenced in November to two years in prison.
