India Miller and Sean Scott
Introduction
India L. Miller, 27, and Sean D. Scott, 45, of Paulsboro, New Jersey, are charged with murder in the October 13, 2026 death of Miller’s 9-year-old daughter, Maya Thomas, whom authorities say was beaten to death inside the family’s home while the couple told a 911 dispatcher the girl had been struck by a car. Gloucester County Prosecutor Andrew Johns said the two are charged with first-degree murder, endangering the welfare of a child and hindering prosecution; online jail records reviewed by the New York Post add filing a false police report and child abuse/neglect counts, and NJ.com reports the murder count is paired with an accomplice-to-murder charge. Both are held at the Salem County jail, and New Jersey’s child-protection agency has opened an investigation into allegations they also sexually abused the girl. They have not entered pleas.
Background Information
Maya Thomas was born in Maui, Hawaii, and from the time she was about 18 months old was raised in Las Vegas by her maternal grandmother, Lynn Miller, and Miller’s wife, Vicki Schleder — the couple had adopted India and her three siblings years earlier because, the grandmother says, their biological mother was abusive. The three weeks India originally asked them to watch her toddler turned into roughly five years; then, about two years ago, India took Maya in the middle of the night and moved to Paulsboro to live with Scott, and cut off contact with the women who raised her, according to the grandmother’s account in NJ.com and the Daily Voice. Maya was never enrolled in school and was homeschooled by Miller and Scott — in her grandmother’s words, “because they didn’t want anybody to see the bruises.”
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Charged, not tried. The account below comes from court documents and statements by the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office and Paulsboro police. Miller and Scott have been charged but not tried, have not entered pleas, and the sexual-abuse allegations are an open agency investigation, not a criminal charge.
Around 1:10 a.m. on Tuesday, October 13, 2026, Scott called 911 to report that a 9-year-old had been hit by a car and was not breathing; radio traffic captured a dispatcher telling responding officers that CPR was in progress. Miller told investigators she heard a loud sound “similar to tires screeching” while the girl was out walking the family dog, and that Scott found her by the shed, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by NJ.com. Responding officers instead found Maya unresponsive inside the home, with facial trauma and bruising over her body, and rushed her to Cooper University Hospital in Camden, where she was pronounced dead at 6:42 p.m. Her death was ruled a homicide caused by multiple blunt-force injuries.
The cover story collapsed quickly. Medical staff determined the child’s injuries were not consistent with being struck by a vehicle; hospital personnel observed facial trauma, bruising across her entire body and multiple broken ribs in various stages of healing, and an autopsy found a ruptured colon, a swollen-shut left eye, and abrasions to her inner thigh and intimate parts — injuries that, in several cases, were already healing, which investigators said indicated abuse over an extended period. NJ.com reported that hospital staff also discovered injuries to the girl’s vaginal area. Area surveillance video showed no vehicle traffic on the street at the time the child was supposedly hit, police said, and inside the home investigators found what appeared to be blood on the tile around the tub, wet and bloody children’s clothing, and blood on a Swiffer mop and other cleaning supplies.
A 4-year-old sibling — Miller’s daughter with Scott, from a different father than Maya — told investigators that Scott hit Maya in the face and eyes on the night in question, according to the affidavit; the child also repeated a claim that Maya had been struck by a Paulsboro police car. The couple were each charged with murder, endangering and abuse/neglect of a child, filing a false police report and hindering prosecution. Separately, a spokesperson for New Jersey’s Division of Child Protection and Permanency confirmed Friday that the agency is investigating both physical and sexual abuse allegations after the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office called the state Child Abuse Hotline the day of the girl’s death.
Public Reaction and Consequences
Paulsboro Mayor John Giovannitti, notified of the charges Thursday, thanked investigators in a Facebook post and asked the community to pray for the child, then told NJ.com: “The people who did this horrific crime are behind bars and will hopefully be behind bars for forever.” He defended the days-long silence about the death, saying investigators “did not want to jeopardize this case.” Neighbors described shock — one, Anthony Culpepper, told WPVI he knew Miller “in passing” and called the allegations horrifying — and another left a stuffed animal outside the home, saying “I didn’t know her, but she was loved.” Maya’s grandmother said she and Schleder learned only weeks earlier, from a visitor to the Paulsboro home, that Maya was being mistreated, contacted the state Department of Human Services and got no response: “People are condemning us because they think we knew this whole time and did nothing, and that is not at all the truth.”
Current Status
Miller and Scott appeared virtually before a Gloucester County judge on Thursday, October 15 — informed of the charges, not yet arraigned — and are due back in court for detention hearings, with the Post reporting a court appearance scheduled Tuesday. Both remain held at the Salem County jail. Neither has entered a plea, and no trial date exists; the murder and related charges are accusations in an open case. The Division of Child Protection and Permanency’s physical- and sexual-abuse investigation is ongoing, the girl’s 4-year-old sibling is in the care of child protection, and the family is working to bring Maya’s remains back to the relatives who raised her.
Impact on Their Career/Life
The case has put Paulsboro, a small Gloucester County town, into national headlines and renewed two uncomfortable questions. The first is homeschooling used as concealment: Maya was never enrolled in any district, so no teacher or school counselor ever saw her, and the superintendent confirmed she was not a student in the district — a gap child-safety advocates have long warned lets abused homeschooled children go invisible. The second is the child-welfare response: the grandmother says her family reported suspected abuse weeks before the killing and got no answer, while the state hotline referral that opened the current abuse investigation came only after the girl was already dead. The alleged false hit-and-run report — and the surveillance video that disproved it — now stands as the central piece of evidence in the prosecution’s case.
Sources
- NY Post, “NJ couple accused of killing 9-year-old daughter – now being probed for sexually abusing her: report,” Oct 17, 2026 — source
- NJ.com, “Paulsboro girl was abused for years and hidden away before murder, family member says,” Oct 2026 — source
- Law&Crime, “Mom and stepdad beat 9-year-old girl to death, police say,” Oct 2026 — source
- WPVI/6abc, “Mother, stepfather charged after allegedly beating 9-year-old girl to death,” Oct 15, 2026 — source
- Daily Voice, “Family of slain Paulsboro girl, 9, reported abuse weeks before her death, great-grandma says,” Oct 2026 — source