New details in child’s death

Published 6:00 am Sunday, October 25, 2026

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Bobby Meador

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Revelin Meador

SCOTTSVILLE — Before 7-year-old Revelin Meador was found dead at her home in Allen County in 2020, officials from the Cabinet for Health and Family Services had made multiple visits to the home and noted insect infestations to her wheelchair and feeding tube, a detective testified Wednesday.

Revelin died Aug. 1, 2020, with the state medical examiner’s office determining the cause to be acute fentanyl intoxication.

Bobby Wayne Meador, 70, of Fountain Run, Revelin’s grandfather and caretaker, was arrested earlier this month on a charge of first-degree manslaughter after police reopened the death investigation.

Meador appeared Wednesday in Allen District Court for a preliminary hearing, at which Allen District Judge Martha Harrison found probable cause that a felony was committed and that Meador was the person responsible, leading the judge to refer the case to a grand jury for a potential indictment.

Detective Robert Smith of the Scottsville Police Department testified that this case was among a number of inactive or unsolved investigations he was assigned after joining the agency.

Smith said he was contacted by Allen County Coroner Darren Davis about Revelin’s case.

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“(Davis) stated this was a case that bothered him and requested I look into it,” said Smith, adding that he received a copy of the medical examiner’s report, death certificate and other paperwork related to the investigation from the coroner.

Smith said the Allen County Sheriff’s Office investigated the death in 2020, but that he was unable to locate any documentation from that probe.

The Allen County-Scottsville Crime Task Force announced in a social media post earlier this month that it had reopened the investigation, and Smith said he interviewed 11 witnesses the next day, with other detectives also receiving information.

Through the investigation, Smith learned that Revelin was a “medically fragile” child who was unable to care for herself, and that Meador had been her caregiver for most of her life, sleeping in a room with Revelin at his home on Celsor Road.

Smith said he learned that at the time of Revelin’s death, other people living in the home included her grandfather and his partner, along with her father, Farren Meador, and his girlfriend, who Smith said both fled from the home in the wake of the 2020 investigation due to having active arrest warrants against them.

The detective testified that witnesses spoke of heavy drinking and drug use, primarily of marijuana and methamphetamine, inside the home by residents and visitors there, with some witnesses alleging that meth was being manufactured on the property.

Bobby Meador’s partner reportedly told police that Meador kept the door to his room locked and that he witnessed Meador grinding a pill in bowl, adding water and placing the mixture into a syringe that he administered to his granddaughter orally.

Revelin was not prescribed fentanyl, according to Smith.

Smith testified that, through interviews, he was able to establish a four-hour period during which the fentanyl would likely have been administered to Revelin and who would have been in the home at that time.

The detective said that he contacted Bobby Meador to get a sense of how he would react to the death investigation being reopened.

“It was very apparent that Mr. Meador cared for his granddaughter, but some things didn’t line up … Bobby said that he was able to wean his granddaughter off multiple medications and that prior to her death she was thriving, those were his words,” Smith said Wednesday. “(Revelin) couldn’t eat or drink herself, Mr. Meador provided all that for her, she was solely dependent on him.”

Smith said that the fentanyl appeared to be medical grade rather than part of a street drug, and that it would have affected the body soon after being administered.

According to the detective, social services workers visited the home on four occasions in 2019, observing cockroach infestations on Revelin’s wheelchair and feeding tube and documenting allegations that Farren Meador sexually abused relatives.

Police arrested Farren Meador on a number of charges this month stemming from those allegations.

Smith said that Bobby Meador at times left her granddaughter in the care of some juvenile girls for extended periods shortly before Revelin died.

At the end of the hearing, Harrison lowered Bobby Meador’s bond from $50,000 to $35,000, and Meador remains lodged in Allen County Detention Center.