Background: The storage facility in Evansville, Indiana, where the child”s body was reportedly found (WEHT/WTVW/YouTube). Inset left: Chyanne Vanegas Porter (Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office). Inset right: Jose Gomez-Alvarez (Madison County Jail).
A woman faces allegations of mistreating her boyfriend’s daughter, who tragically is believed to have died from starvation, with her body subsequently concealed in a tote and abandoned in a Kentucky storage unit.
Chyanne Porter, 30, was found guilty in December 2024 on multiple charges, including being an accessory to criminal abuse, tampering with evidence, and corpse abuse. After spending over a year incarcerated in Daviess County, Kentucky, she was transferred on Tuesday to the custody of the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office in Indiana.
In Indiana, Porter is confronted with nine charges, including neglect of a dependent, obstruction of justice, corpse abuse, and failing to report a death.
Alianna Maya Gomez-Alvarez was last seen at the age of 9 in November 2021. Despite her disappearance, neither Porter nor the girl’s father, Jose Gomez-Alvarez, reported her as missing, according to authorities.
It wasn’t until September 2022 that someone alerted the Daviess County Sheriff’s Office about the girl’s prolonged absence. The agency mentioned during its investigation that the caller noted Porter and Jose Gomez-Alvarez were responsible for several children, but one young girl had been missing for an extended period.
According to reports from Law&Crime, the investigation by deputies led them to a storage facility on New Hartford Road in Owensboro, Kentucky. Upon searching the unit, they discovered a tote containing the child’s remains, wrapped in a blanket.
Investigators responded to the family’s home in Evansville, Indiana, and learned that Alianna was one of three children Jose Gomez-Alvarez had from a previous relationship, regional NBC affiliate WFIE reported. The couple also shared two of their own children.
According to an affidavit reviewed by the outlet, the parents took better care of their two shared children, including by feeding them properly, than they did the other three kids. The children apparently had a lot to say once investigators asked them about their sister and living situation.
Chyanne Porter and Jose Gomez-Alvarez (Madison County Jail)
“Can I tell you something?” one of them reportedly asked. “My mom killed Alianna and then put her in the basement.”
“My mom never fed her. She was very very skinny. She got skinny when my mom didn’t feed her,” the child added, per WFIE.
Another kid said Porter and Jose Gomez-Alvarez would hit, choke, and starve them, and they believed Alianna had starved to death. After the victim’s death and alleged placement in their basement, the parents put her body into the tote, checked into the Days Inn in Owensboro, Kentucky, and placed the bag into the storage unit — as the child put it — as if it were a box of toys.
Porter was sentenced to seven years after her conviction in Kentucky. Jose Gomez-Alvarez, who was 34 at the time, was sentenced to five years after pleading guilty to abuse of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence, per The Owensboro Times. There are no indications he also faces charges in Indiana.
A trial for Porter in Indiana has not yet been announced. It does not appear that she has entered a plea.
