A Baton Rouge judge sentenced the man convicted of packing an unresponsive 2-year-old’s body into a suitcase and burying the child in Mississippi to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Wednesday.

Phillip Kegan Gardner, 34, stood before 19th Judicial District Court Judge Fred Crifasi and asked that he deviate from the state-mandated life without parole sentence for murder. A jury found Gardner guilty of second-degree murder and obstruction of justice at the end of a two-week trial May 9.

Gardner stuffed his live-in girlfriend’s daughter, Nevaeh Allen, in a suitcase after he found the 2-year-old girl unresponsive in the family’s apartment and couldn’t revive her the afternoon of Sept. 24, 2021. He drove the toddler across state lines and buried her body in a shallow grave

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