A Liberty Township woman charged earlier this year with child molesting shot
herself to death on Monday, the Porter County Sheriff’s Police said.
Teresa Lloyd, 46, of 1002 Sun Valley Drive, was found dead in a field near
her home at 3:23 p.m. with a gunshot wound to her chest, police said.
Lloyd had been formally charged on Jan. 15 with two counts of child
molesting, a Class A felony punishable by a term of 20 to 50 years. Police
said that Lloyd left a suicide note and had a court appearance scheduled for
Tuesday.
According to police, a neighbor walking his dogs found Lloyd lying in an
area of tall grass and brush in a field in the 1700 block of Vail Drive.
Approximately 30 minutes earlier, at 2:04 p.m., a different neighbor heard
“one loud gun shot” and, one to two seconds later, a second shot “quieter
than the first,” police said.
Lloyd sustained “an apparent gunshot wound in the direct center” of her
chest and a “clear burn mark, presumably from muzzle blast, was on the white
tee-shirt,” police said. A Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver, with three
live hollow-point rounds and two empty cartridges, was found next to Lloyd’s
body.
“No foul play is suspected,” police added. An autopsy was to be performed.
While investigators were at the scene, a man identifying himself as Lloyd’s
live-in boyfriend approached an officer and advised that Lloyd had “been
‘depressed’ ever since she was arrested on Jan. 15,” police said. She had
formerly worked as a Portage Township School bus driver but had been
suspended after her arrest, the man also advised.
The man told investigators that he owns a S&W .38 caliber revolver.
According to the probable cause affidavit filed in the child molesting case,
in November 2009 the father of a 16-year-old Portage boy reported his belief
that Lloyd had molested his son. In a subsequent interview, the boy advised
police that, when he and Lloyd “first started having intercourse, (Lloyd)
told him not to tell anybody about it because they would both get into
trouble”; that “he didn’t realize what they were doing was wrong until he
had a sex education class”; that he then “refused to continue”; that Lloyd
“tried for several weeks afterward to get him to engage in intercourse”; but
that “he continue to refuse and eventually she stopped trying.”
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