CROWN POINT, Ind. — A Gary woman whose prison sentence was thrown out on appeal in a 2018 apartment fire that killed two of her children will be resentenced this month to no more than 42 years in prison.
Kristen A. Gober, 36, was sentenced in August 2020 to 51 years after she pleaded guilty to neglect charges for leaving her three children alone overnight in March 2018 in their Gary apartment. Two of the children died after they started a fire in her absence.
The Indiana Court of Appeals ruled in February that Gober’s sentence should not have exceeded 42 years. She is scheduled to be resentenced on June 28.
Gober’s 6-year-old son escaped the fire, police said. But two of her children, 2-year-old Kailani Gober and 4-year-old Khristopher Gober, died of smoke inhalation and burns, according to the Lake County coroner.
Another child, 8-year-old Monty Spencer, survived the fire when he jumped from a fourth-floor window into blankets his neighbors were holding below.