Mother arrested twice within a week: She forced her children to smoke and sprayed them with pepper spray, police said

LAS CRUCES, NM (KFOX) — A New Mexico woman has been arrested for the second time in a week after an investigator found she allegedly punished her children with pepper spray and forced them to smoke cigarettes until they vomited.

Yvonne Legardy, 40, was arrested Thursday morning at a Walmart in Las Cruces on child abuse charges, three days after she was arrested on the same charge.

While Legardy was initially arrested on Monday after allegedly hitting one of her children with a mop handle, Las Cruces police investigators found that her punishment methods went far beyond that, according to court documents.

According to court documents, on May 11, Legardy found an e-cigarette that allegedly belonged to one of her children. Not knowing who it belonged to, Legardy took two of her children to the backyard and forced them to smoke cigarettes until they coughed and vomited.

Court documents further state that Legardy was so upset by the vomiting that she pulled out a can of pepper spray and sprayed both children with pepper spray.

According to court documents, Legardy has pepper-sprayed her children several times in the past after accusing them of stealing money.

Legardy was also arrested on Monday for allegedly hitting her son with a mop handle in the backyard.

According to the arrest report, the boy ran away from home on May 31 and sought shelter in a library after Legardy allegedly hit him with a blue metal mop. The boy told police Legardy hit him with the mop because he didn’t clean the backyard “properly.”

According to the police report, the boy had several 15-centimeter-long welts on his body that were swollen and cylindrical in shape like a mop handle.

In addition, Legardy’s husband, Lerenzo Andre Legardy, was arrested in March after allegedly hitting one of the children with an extension cord.

According to court documents, Yvonne Legardy is known for “overdoing it” with her punishments, but since marrying Lerenzo Andre Legardy, her methods have become even more severe and the two “feed each other off.”

Yvonne Legardy’s criminal past includes nearly 30 cases of child abuse related to arrests in 2013, 2014, 2023 and 2024.