JUST IN: Baby Killer Andrew Lukehart Beat 5-Month-Old During a Diaper Change — Florida Executed Him
A Jacksonville man who confessed to killing his girlfriend’s 5-month-old baby 30 years ago has been executed. This marks the eighth person executed in Florida this year. It’s been nearly three decades since Andrew Loukard was convicted of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in the death of Gabrielle Hanshaw.
While some might view the execution as a sense of justice, a group outside the Florida State Prison tonight says they were there to peacefully share their opposition to the death penalty. News 4 Jax reporter Ariel Schillo was outside the prison when Loukard took his last breath. The jury that convicted Loukard recommended the electric chair, and today the judge followed that.
The defendant, Andrew Richard Loukard, is hereby sentenced to death for the murder of Gabrielle Hanshaw. Loukard showed no reaction. His former girlfriend says she’s relieved. He killed an innocent child. My child. I ain’t God’s creature. There was no call for it. Anything you’d like to say about this verdict? What about the next phase? Are you worried about getting the death penalty? Nope.
Your reaction to the sentence today? Huh. What does that mean? I’ll be back. The last day of Gabrielle Hanshaw’s life was unseasonably warm. It was a Sunday in February 1996 in Jacksonville, Florida. The temperature reached 80°. Her family had spent the afternoon running errands, then came back home to their house on Epson Lane.
Gabby was placed in her playpen. Her mother took her sick 2-year-old sister to lie down in the bedroom. That left 5-month-old Gabby in the care of 22-year-old Andrew Loukard, her mother’s boyfriend. He was the last person to ever see her alive. Around 5:00 p.m., her mother heard her own car start up in the driveway.
She looked out the window and saw Lutchart driving away. She searched the house for Gabby, but couldn’t find her. What followed over the next 15 hours was a lie so elaborate it took 50 officers, K9 units, a helicopter, and a dive team to unravel it. Andrew Lutchart had inflicted at least five blows to the head of a 5-month-old baby during a diaper change.
Then he threw her body in a pond. Then he fabricated an abduction story and sent half of Jacksonville out searching the woods for a child he had already killed. And here is the detail that makes this case almost impossible to sit with. He had done this before. Two years earlier, he had shaken another girlfriend’s 8-month-old daughter so violently she suffered a fractured skull, a broken arm, two broken ribs, a broken leg, and brain damage that left her with seizures and permanent vision loss.
He received 10 months in jail for that. He was still on probation for it when he killed Gabrielle. If you are new to this channel, support us. Like, subscribe, and turn on the notification bell. New videos like this drop every week. But to understand how it came to this, you need to go back to Jacksonville in the early 1990s.
Because the real story starts long before a diaper change in the back den of a house on Epson Lane. With a young man who had already shown exactly what he was capable of, and a system that gave him every opportunity to do it again. On June 2nd, 2026, the state of Florida executed Andrew Richard Lutchart for the 1996 murder of 5-month-old Gabrielle Hanshaw.
But before we get to that needle, you need to know who Gabrielle was. And you need to understand every step of what happened in that house and in the 15 hours that followed before the truth finally came out. Gabrielle Henshaw was just 5 months old. She went by Gabby. She was the younger of two daughters born to a young woman named Misty Ru.
Her older sister Ashley was 2 years old. Gabby had been alive for 5 months. She had done nothing to anyone. She could not walk, could not talk, could not call for help, could not understand what was happening to her. She was in her playpen on a warm Sunday afternoon when the person her mother had trusted to watch her pick her up to change her diaper.
She never came back to that playpen. Gabby’s mother, Misty Ru, attended the execution on June 2nd, 2026. She declined to share a statement afterward. There are no words adequate to what she has carried for 30 years. The knowledge that she left her 5-month-old daughter in the care of a man who had already broken another baby’s bones and that she did not know it.
Because the system that sentenced Andrew Luccart to 10 months in jail for shattering an 8-month-old skull never told her. She had no idea who she was living with. Gabby deserved the chance to grow up, to take her first steps, to say her first words, to become whoever she was going to be. She was 5 months old and she was killed during a diaper change.
The perpetrator, Andrew Richard Luccart, has just been executed for the crime he committed on February 25th, 1996, when he was 22 years old. The fatal beating of his girlfriend’s 5-month-old daughter, Gabrielle Henshaw, in their Jacksonville, Florida home. Andrew Richard Luccart was born on April 10th, 1973, in Jacksonville, Florida.
Evidence presented at his trial showed that he grew up in a home marked by alcoholism, violence, sexual abuse, mental illness, and profound loss. The dysfunction was deep and documented. His attorneys used every part of it during the sentencing phase, asking the jury to consider the broken environment that had produced the broken man in front of them.
What that background cannot explain is the pattern of his abuse and killing. Because Andrew Lucker had already done this once before Gabby was ever born. On April 14th, 1994, Lucker was in a relationship with another young woman who had an infant daughter named Jillian French. Jillian was 8 months old when Lucker shook her so violently that she sustained a closed head injury, resulting in seizures that would follow her for the rest of her life, and permanent visual deficits that would never heal.
She also suffered a broken arm, two broken ribs, a broken leg, and a fractured skull. An 8-month-old baby, broken in multiple places. Lucker pleaded guilty to felony child abuse. The court sentenced him to 10 months in jail, 4 years of probation, and mandatory attendance at parenting classes and anger management programs.
10 months for a fractured skull and four broken bones on an infant. He served his time, completed some of his probation requirements, and moved on. He found another girlfriend. Her name was Misty Rue. She had two young daughters, a 2-year-old named Ashley and a newborn named Gabrielle. Misty Rue did not know about Jillian French.
Nobody told her. And Andrew Lucker moved into her home on Absen Lane with her infant daughter sleeping in the next room. By early 1996, Andrew Lukhart was 22 years old and living in Misty Roo’s house on Epson Lane near Normandy Boulevard in Jacksonville. The household included Misty, her father, her uncle, 2-year-old Ashley, and 5-month-old Gabriel.
He was still on probation for what he had done to Jillian French. On the afternoon of Sunday, February 25th, 1996, the family had been out running errands together. Misty, Lukhart, Ashley, and Gabby driving around Jacksonville in Misty’s white 1981 Oldsmobile Regency. The temperature outside had climbed to 80°.
It felt more like summer than February. When they got back to the house on Epson Lane, they settled in for the evening. Misty took 2-year-old Ashley, who had been feeling sick, into the bedroom to lie down and rest. Gabby was placed in her playpen. And Andrew Lukhart stayed out in the living area to watch her.
Around 4:30 p.m., Lukhart picked Gabby up from the playpen. She had a messy diaper. He walked toward the bedroom where Misty was lying down with Ashley and asked for a clean diaper and baby wipes. Misty told him the baby wipes were in the back den. Lukhart took the clean diaper and carried Gabby to the back den.
Misty Roo never saw her daughter alive again. What happened in that back den during the diaper change was this. Gabriel would not lie still while Andrew was changing her diaper. And Andrew Lukhart, a man who had already shattered an infant’s skull 2 years earlier, responded by forcefully and repeatedly pushing the baby’s head and neck into the floor.
He struck her in the head at least five times. A 5-month-old baby. During a diaper change. because she would not lie still. When it was over, Gabby was dying or already dead. And Andrew Loukart made a decision. He did not call 911. He did not call for Misty. He did not try to help her. He picked up Gabrielle’s body, walked out of the back den, went to the driveway, got into Misty’s white Oldsmobile, and drove away.
Around 5:00 p.m., Misty heard her car start up outside. She went to the window and watched Loukart drive away. She searched around the house for her baby, but couldn’t see her. Half an hour later, the phone rang. It was Loukart. And what he told Misty Rue on that phone call was the beginning of a lie that would consume the next 15 hours and send 50 officers searching through the woods and ponds of two counties.
He told her that while he was throwing away a dirty diaper near their home, a stranger in a blue blazer had pulled up and snatched Gabrielle right out of his hands. He said he chased the blazer on foot, then in the car. He said he had been pursuing the kidnapper through Clay County, the county just south of Jacksonville, when he ran off the road and crashed on County Road 217.
Misty called police and the search began. What followed was one of the largest missing child searches Jacksonville had ever seen. 50 officers from both the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, K9 units, a helicopter, a full dive team. They searched the woods. They searched the ponds.
They searched for a blue blazer. They searched for a kidnapper who did not exist. Loukart was brought in and questioned. His story changed. Then it changed again. Each time investigators pushed, the details shifted. The timeline moved. The location changed. The description of the Blazer evolved. Police grew suspicious, but they kept searching because there was still a 5-month-old baby somewhere out there.
The search went through the night. By the following morning, Monday, February 26th, 1996, approximately 15 hours had passed since Misty had heard her car pull out of the driveway. At around noon on February 26th, Lockhart was sitting across from a lieutenant with the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, and the story finally fell apart.
He told the lieutenant the truth. He said he had dropped Gabby on her head and then shaken her. He said she had died inside Misty Roo’s residence in the back den during the diaper change. He said when she died, he had panicked. He had left the house, driven to a pond near Normandy Boulevard in Jacksonville, and thrown Gabrielle’s body into the water.
Law enforcement went immediately to the area near Normandy Boulevard. They found the pond. They found Gabrielle Hanshaw’s body in the water. When investigators recovered Gabrielle Hanshaw’s body from that pond near Normandy Boulevard and took her to the medical examiner, the autopsy told a story that directly contradicted everything Andrew Lockhart had said.
He had claimed it was an accident, that he dropped her, that he shook her in a panic after she fell. The medical examiner found at least five separate blows to the head. The injuries were not consistent with a fall. They were not consistent with a drop. They were not consistent with the reflexive shaking of a man in a panic after an accident.
They were consistent with a deliberate, repeated, forceful assault on an infant. Prosecutors would later argue, and the evidence would support, that Lockhart had forcefully and repeatedly pushed Gabrielle’s head and neck into the floor of the back den after she would not lie still during her diaper change. Five blows to a 5-month-old baby.
On March 7th, 1996, 9 days after Gabrielle’s body was recovered, Andrew Richard Lockhart was formally indicted on one count of first-degree murder and one count of aggravated child abuse. He was 22 years old. He was still on probation for the injuries he had inflicted on 8-month-old Jillian French 2 years earlier when he committed a greater one.
The trial took place in Duval County, Florida in February 1997, exactly 1 year after Gabrielle’s death. The prosecution was led by Assistant State Attorney Angela Corey, who would later become one of the most prominent prosecutors in Florida’s history. Lockhart took the stand in his own defense. He testified that he loved Gabrielle.
He did not deny that she died in his care. He did not deny shaking her. But he insisted it was an accident, that he had dropped her, panicked, shaken her, and that everything that followed was the action of a frightened young man who did not know what to do next. His defense attorney argued that if Lockhart was guilty of anything at all, it was negligent manslaughter, not premeditated murder, not first-degree murder.
Angela Corey stood before the jury and said seven words that have followed this case ever since. There is nothing negligent about five blows to a baby’s head. The jury deliberated. They looked at the autopsy findings. They looked at the five separate impacts on the skull of a 5-month old child. They looked at the prior conviction, at Jillian French’s fractured skull and broken bones from 1994, and they looked at the 15-hour lie, the blue blazer that never existed, the kidnapper who was never there.
The entire search that Luckhart had manufactured to buy himself time while Gabrielle’s body sank in a pond near Normandy Boulevard. In February 1997, the jury found Andrew Richard Luckhart guilty of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse. In a 9-to-3 vote, they recommended the death penalty. The judge accepted that recommendation.
Andrew Luckhart was sentenced to death at the age of 23. Following his 1997 sentencing, Andrew Richard Luckhart was received at the Florida Department of Corrections on April 4th, 1997. He would spend the next 29 years on death row. During that time, his attorneys filed multiple rounds of appeals. They argued Miranda violations, that his confession had been improperly obtained.
They argued improper jury instructions. They argued insufficient evidence of premeditation. They argued that his childhood, the alcoholism, the violence, the sexual abuse, the mental illness, the profound losses, had never been adequately weighed as mitigating factors. Every court that reviewed his case reached the same conclusion.
His conviction and death sentence stood. On May 1st, 2026, Governor Ron DeSantis signed Andrew Luckhart’s death warrant. The execution was set for June 2nd, 2026 at 6:00 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke, Florida. His attorneys made their final legal moves in the days before the execution. The Florida Supreme Court rejected the final appeal for a stay.
On Monday, June 1st, 2026, the day before the scheduled execution, the United States Supreme Court denied Lockett’s final appeal as well. Every door was closed. Lockett declined a last meal. He received no visitors in the hours before the execution. He did meet with a spiritual advisor, a priest, who would also be present inside the execution chamber when the time came.
On the evening of June 2nd, 2026, it was time. At 6:00 p.m. on June 2nd, 2026, the curtain of the execution chamber at Florida State Prison near Starke went up on schedule. Andrew Richard Lockett was already strapped to the table. The flow was already in his arm. He was still and calm. At the foot of the table sat the priest who had met with him that day.
There to pray over him as he died. When the warden asked Lockett if he had a final statement, he raised his head. He looked toward a group sitting in the front row of the viewing area. He said, “I’m sorry.” And then he recited the Bible verse Luke chapter 23 verse 34. The same words that scripture says Jesus Christ spoke from the cross during his crucifixion.
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Those were the last words Andrew Richard Lockett ever spoke. The three-drug injection began immediately after. Lockett lost consciousness almost immediately. He did not appear to struggle. He did not appear to feel anything. Andrew Richard Lockett was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. on June 2nd, 2026.
He He 53 years old. He had spent 29 years on death row for what he did to Gabrielle Hanshaw in the back den of a house on Epsom Lane on the afternoon of February 25th, 1996. He was Florida’s eighth execution of 2026, the 36th execution carried out under Governor Ron DeSantis since he took office. Andrew Richard Lucious is now gone.
Gabrielle Hanshaw never got to take a single step. Never got to say a single word. She was 5 months old on a warm February Sunday in Jacksonville when the man her mother trusted to watch her pick her up for a diaper change and did not put her back down. Here is the question this case leaves behind. Andrew Lucious was sentenced to death for the murder of Gabrielle Hanshaw.
Nobody disputes what he did. He lied and searched and sent 50 officers through the woods and ponds of two counties while her body was already in that water near Normandy Boulevard. But Jillian French, the 8-month-old he broke in 1994, is still alive. She has seizures. She has permanent vision damage. She was 8 months old when he did it to her.
And the court gave him 10 months and sent him home. If the system had sentenced Andrew Lucious appropriately in 1994, Gabrielle Hanshaw would have been born into a world where he was still in prison. She would be 30 years old today. What do you think about this case? Did Florida get it wrong at first by not sentencing Andrew Lucious when he first showed the signs of being a danger to little children in 1994 which could have prevented the death of little Gabrielle? Or did the system fail both Andrew Lucious and Gabrielle Hanshaw?
Drop your answer in the comments below. I read every single one of them. And if this story stayed with you, share it, like it, and subscribe. Because every story on this channel is about a real person. And every real person deserves to have their story told in full. If you’re a lover of creepy true crime stories, true crime documentaries, horror crime, unsolved mysteries, and the rest, you can do well to check out our twin channel Mysterious Dark Files for more videos like that.
