MORGAN COUNTY, Ala. (WHNT) — The Alabama Department of Mental Health has completed its competency evaluation of a mother charged in the stabbing death of her 8-year-old son, court records show.
Jennifer Long is charged with capital murder in the stabbing death of her 8-year-old son, Tyler Gardiner. She is also accused of stabbing her father during the incident on Colony Lane in Hartselle on March 16, 2023.
Court records show that ADMH turned over its mental competency report to Circuit Judge Jennifer Howell on October 20. Howell filed an order on Oct. 23 saying she had received and reviewed the order, and a hearing regarding the competency evaluation would come at a later date if requested by an attorney.
Long’s attorneys requested the outpatient evaluation of her competency to stand trial back in June 2024, and Judge Howell granted the motion two days later.
According to testimony from a Morgan County Sheriff’s Office investigator during a hearing in April 2023, the 8-year-old lived with his grandparents in the home on Colony Lane, and his mother, Long, had recently been staying there as well.
The 911 call, which came in around 5:30 a.m., came from her father who was at a home on Village Drive. He told responding deputies that his daughter had stabbed him at his home on Colony Lane and his grandson was still in the residence, so he asked deputies to go check on him.
An affidavit from investigators said that after entering the house deputies made contact with a female, later identified as Jennifer Long, coming down the stairs. The affidavit said deputies asked her to lie down on the ground and she complied but informed deputies that the “little boy was dead.”
It said the deputies cleared the residence and located the child lying in the bed of the master bedroom dead with multiple stab wounds.
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