This Is One Disturbing Murder Case

“My daughter, I’m feeling so, so bad,” Cheyenne sobbed, her voice trembling as she sat across from the investigators. “I just feel older. I’m never going to be able to do it again—she had just started laughing, you guys.”

The officer leaned forward, his expression cold as he pushed through the initial web of excuses. “Any other drugs that y’all do?” he asked directly.

“Uh, no, just marijuana and meth, but we can do that,” Jonathan interjected, his own tone eerily casual despite the absolute chaos unspooling around them in the small room.

“Okay. Does Cheyenne do that as well?” the officer pressed, writing down every word.

“Yeah, she did, probably for I want to say the same time I did,” Jonathan admitted, adjusting himself in the chair.

“All right. Do you smoke it or do you inject it? Or how do y’all normally?”

“Uh, we inject it,” came the quiet, damning response.

The reality behind these confessions was as dark as it was heartbreaking. Friends, today’s case involves Cheyenne Schilling and Jonathan Lopez, two individuals whose utter neglect led to an unimaginable tragedy.

Welcome to the case of baby Shiloh. These two parents woke up one morning to find their infant daughter completely unresponsive, with trace amounts of methamphetamine residue later noted around the victim’s lips.

Before the official interrogations fully got under way, Cheyenne had been attempting CPR on the baby while screaming hysterically, repeatedly shouting, “I’ve killed before! I’ve killed before!”

This horrifying statement was a direct reference to one of her twin boys who had tragically passed away just a month after birth, a prior trauma that hung like a dark cloud over the family.

In the interview room, the detective tried to piece together the timeline of the fatal morning. “And you had everybody in your bed?” she asked Cheyenne.

“Yes, ma’am. And they don’t get small—they do have their own beds, but she does not sleep alone,” Cheyenne explained, sniffling. “They need to be on my side.”

“So, you had your son on the end?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then you had your daughter?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then it was you, and then it was your husband?”

“Yes, ma’am. And you know, when we woke up, about 3:30, that’s how we were still sleeping.”

“You had a cover on all of you?” the detective probed.

“Yes, ma’am. Well, no, we had two different covers in our room,” Cheyenne clarified, wiping her nose. “There should have been an Angry Birds one in there, and then the little baby blankets, and the big comforter.”

“Okay. Where does your little baby sleep normally?”

“She sleeps in the bed with me,” Cheyenne insisted. “Ever since she was born, she’s been so attached. DCF comes out, but where she’s comfortable is where I’m comfortable.”

“So when DCF went out when she was born, they talked to you about safe sleeping practices, right?”

Cheyenne let out a strange, nervous laugh before trying to justify her actions. “You got to understand, my daughter has such bad separation anxiety. If I walk out of the room, they freak out.”

“My son is a twin, and his twin passed away a month after he was born,” she continued. “I have my kids all day, I never leave them, so they just follow me everywhere.”

“I woke up and we were all still in the same spot,” she recounted, her eyes widening as she recalled the moment of discovery. “She had a little blood coming out of her nose, and I was like, ‘What the hell, Jonathan? She’s not breathing! Help me!'”

“I panicked because I lost my youngest son by myself and his father wasn’t there,” Cheyenne wept. “This was so much more real. I freaked out, ran out of the room, and screamed, ‘Everybody please help me!'”

“Who did you go out of the room to get help from?” the investigator asked.

“Out to the road, girl. Everybody in the whole little apartment complex—nobody was home, and I needed a phone. I flagged so many people down and they didn’t stop while I kept screaming, ‘My baby, I think she’s dead!'”

“What time was that, do you remember?”

“I don’t know,” Cheyenne stammered. “It’s only been about an hour. I don’t even think it’s been that long.”

“The apartment that you’re at right now—is that your apartment?”

“Yes, ma’am, this is where we live. It’s just me, Jonathan, my son, and my daughter.”

“And previous to that, you were living in Orlando? DCF went out—do you have any idea why? What happened?”

“That’s what we’re here to figure out,” the detective reminded her gently. “What was her weight at birth?”

“I don’t even know,” Cheyenne replied, trailing off. “She was just perfect. That was a perfect birthing experience. My twins, they weighed barely one and two pounds.”

“How do you go on with life just knowing that you lose two children?” she cried out, her voice cracking. “Is that something God wants? Why doesn’t he want me to be a mother? It’s not fair.”

“How far along were you when she was born?”

“I went past my due date with that girl,” Cheyenne said, small bits of laughter mixing with her sobbing. “I was 40 weeks and two days. She was just perfect.”

“And do you breastfeed, or do you bottle feed?”

“No, I bottle feed,” Cheyenne answered. “I just went and bought her brand new formula yesterday because the old one wasn’t agreeing with her.”

“What kind of formula do you use?”

“I just switch between the off-brand Enfamil and the Walmart brand,” she said. “It just helped her belly out. I was so scared about her stomach, I didn’t want anything bad to happen.”

“What are you on family probation for?” the detective asked, pivoting the subject slightly.

“I don’t even know what they ended up deciding the charges were,” Cheyenne claimed softly. “It was so long ago, I don’t even remember.”

“Who is your probation officer now? Have you met him yet?”

“Yes, ma’am. I have an appointment with him on the 13th. John Stewart.”

As the tape continued, Cheyenne spiraled into deeper emotional instability, struggling to reconcile her reality with the unfolding death investigation.

“I don’t know what to do, you guys,” Cheyenne repeated to the officers, wringing her hands nervously. “My daughter… I feel like I’m going to lose her so bad.”

“She just started laughing, you guys,” she wept. “She just said ‘mama’ and everything.”

“And the last few days, have y’all had any rough play or falls?” the investigator asked carefully.

“No, not at all,” Cheyenne insisted. “Just when we were trying to revive her. When we had my twins, Chance and Jackson, they made us take a CPR class.”

“So as I’m trying to breathe into her mouth while holding her nose, her dad was giving her compressions,” she explained. “I told him, ‘Don’t do it so hard in case you break her ribs.'”

“He was trying so hard, saying she had to come back,” she continued. “Eventually I had to walk away because I couldn’t deal with it. I just couldn’t deal with it.”

“Did you do CPR inside the house or when you ran out to the road?”

“Right outside,” Cheyenne clarified. “The landlord had carpet laid down outside around the walkway, and we were doing CPR right there on the carpet for about four or five minutes before I ran to the road.”

“And you remember how long that went on?”

“Yeah, about four or five minutes right there,” she said. “When we first got her out, you guys, she was purple. She was purple, and she had blood coming out of her nose. I don’t understand it.”

Cheyenne covered her face as tears streamed down her cheeks. “I feel like the biggest loser. How does this happen to me? I lost my brother, my mama, my daddy, and now both of my children. What do I do?”

“Well, you still have your other son,” the detective reminded her sternly yet softly.

“I know I do, but I don’t want to go on,” Cheyenne whispered. “I’ve been in such a deep postpartum depression. Every day I see the repercussions of his twin brother’s death.”

“Did you ever get diagnosed with any kind of mental health condition?”

“No, ma’am.”

“When you were involved with DCF previously, they referred you to grief counseling. Did you ever go?”

“They never referred me to that,” Cheyenne claimed. “When I had Shiloh, I tested positive for marijuana, so they did a home study. The lady approved it, but she never called me back.”

“So you never had counseling?”

“No,” Cheyenne replied. “I can deal with the death of anybody else—my brother was murdered, my father passed—I can handle that. But my children… that’s something I can never get over.”

“That’s what we’re here to help figure out,” the officer said. “Did you have any complications during her birth?”

“No, not at all,” Cheyenne said, letting out another incongruous giggle. “She was smooth, though I was mad because the epidural was painful. I used to joke with her, ‘Girl, you caused me so much pain!'”

“And you said about 3:30 or 4:00 this morning she woke up and you fed her a bottle?”

“That’s right,” Cheyenne confirmed. “I gave her formula mixed with baby food, Gerber rice and some mangoes.”

“Did you give her anything new recently?” the investigator inquired.

“Well, actually yes,” Cheyenne recalled. “Yesterday my brother suggested a pea and carrot mix. I smelled it and thought it stank, but she actually ate some of it.”

“And how do you feed her? Do you hold her?”

“Yeah, I always hold her in my arms like this,” Cheyenne demonstrated. “I sit her up afterward to burp her and pat her back.”

“Does anybody smoke inside your house?”

“We smoke cigarettes in the house,” Cheyenne admitted freely. “And sometimes marijuana.”

“Do you do any illegal narcotics or anything like that?” the officer asked directly.

“No,” Cheyenne lied without hesitation.

“Are you on any medication now? Do you drink alcohol?”

“No,” Cheyenne responded.

“How often does the baby wake up at night?”

“Usually just once a night for about an hour,” Cheyenne explained. “She’ll eat, smile, play a bit, and then I’ll rock her back to sleep.”

“When was the last time you changed her diaper?”

“Last night,” Cheyenne said. “She and my son both peed at the same time.”

At that moment, the tone of the interview shifted as the investigator prepared to administer the necessary protocols.

“So, Cheyenne, one more thing we have to do, just to be sure—we need to conduct a drug test, if that’s okay with you.”

Cheyenne paused, her expression dropping instantly. “If I take this drug test… are you guys going to take my child away from me?”

“We just want to be truthful and honest so we can figure out what happened,” the officer responded calmly.

Meanwhile, in another room, Jonathan was faced with the same questions by a second investigator.

“Is there anything y’all smoke in there?” the officer asked Jonathan.

“Cigarettes,” Jonathan replied flatly.

“What about marijuana?”

“Yeah.”

“Any other drugs that y’all do?”

“Uh, not that I know of, but some meth that we can do,” Jonathan admitted casually.

“Does Cheyenne do that as well?”

“Yeah, she did, probably around the same time I did.”

“Do you smoke it or inject it?”

“I inject it,” Jonathan stated. “We did it about a week and a half ago.”

“Do you have a history of doing that? What about Cheyenne?”

“Well, she did too,” Jonathan said. “We came up here trying to get her life together with her babies.”

“And do you remember what time y’all woke up this morning?”

“Around 10:30 or 11:00,” Jonathan recalled. “We woke up, saw she wasn’t breathing, and started CPR right away.”

“How long do you think y’all did CPR for?”

“Like 15 minutes,” Jonathan estimated.

“What do y’all normally feed her?”

“Formula and baby rice, little booster baby foods,” Jonathan answered. “She had a bottle right before bed.”

To fully understand what transpired on that fateful morning of January 8th, one must look closely at the timeline established by law enforcement.

At around 4:00 AM, the three-month-old infant woke up, and Cheyenne fed her a bottle filled with a mix of formula and baby cereal.

Following the feeding, all four family members—Cheyenne, Jonathan, the infant Shiloh, and her two-year-old brother—remained crammed into a single bed.

Seven hours later, at approximately 11:00 AM, the parents woke up to discover that Shiloh was completely unresponsive and not breathing.

Panic ensued as Cheyenne and Jonathan ran out into the street holding the motionless infant, screaming for help and attempting to flag down passing vehicles.

Jonathan eventually managed to stop a driver, jumped into the car with the baby, and rushed toward the nearest medical center.

Witnesses on the street reported seeing blood coming from the infant’s nose and noting that her lips had already turned blue.

It was during this manic scramble that Cheyenne lost control, shouting to anyone nearby that this was the second child she had killed.

Upon arrival at the medical center, medical personnel worked frantically, but the three-month-old baby was tragically pronounced dead shortly after arrival.

Attending staff immediately noticed alarming physical details on Cheyenne, including fresh track marks on her arms, bruising, and visible burn marks on her fingers.

Due to her extreme hysteria and uncooperative state, doctors were forced to sedate Cheyenne before any coherent questioning could take place.

Once the sedation wore off, Cheyenne gave her statement to the police, admitting to co-sleeping and smoking inside the home despite knowing the risks.

Officials from the Department of Children and Families (DCF) arrived at the hospital, having previously educated Cheyenne on safe sleeping environments.

Given her volatile state and clear evidence of severe substance abuse, doctors placed Cheyenne under an emergency psychiatric hold under the Baker Act.

Drug screenings were immediately ordered for both parents as well as the surviving two-year-old child present in the home.

The results were damning: both Cheyenne and Jonathan tested positive for amphetamines, methamphetamines, THC, and MDMA (ecstasy).

DCF took immediate custody of the surviving toddler, placing him into foster care to ensure his safety while further hair follicle testing was conducted.

The medical examiner’s office performed a detailed autopsy on baby Shiloh to determine the exact cause of her sudden death.

During the physical examination, investigators discovered trace amounts of methamphetamine residue present on the infant’s lips.

However, subsequent toxicological analysis of the baby’s blood came back negative for illegal substances, ruling out an acute overdose.

The official cause of death was determined to be Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), with the final manner of death left undetermined.

Despite the toxicology findings, the medical examiner noted that the unsafe co-sleeping arrangement, heavy drug use, and unsanitary environment were significant contributing factors.

Search warrants executed on the family’s residence revealed horrific living conditions, including widespread mold, extreme filth, and drug paraphernalia.

Detectives recovered a loaded syringe containing methamphetamine sitting directly next to the bed where the family had slept.

Because Cheyenne was already serving felony probation at the time, the positive drug test constituted a direct violation of her court terms.

Both Cheyenne Schilling and Jonathan Lopez were formally arrested and charged with felony child neglect without great bodily harm.

The court proceedings highlighted a severe, persistent pattern of drug abuse and gross negligence within a home housing vulnerable young children.

Ultimately, both parents were convicted for their roles in the tragic circumstances surrounding Shiloh’s death and sentenced to 10 years in state prison.