A woman who stabbed her grandfather, 70, then killed her sons, ages 2 years and 7 months, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder.
Aleah Newell, 20, did not appear at her bail hearing in a Chicago courtroom on Saturday because she is still in a hospital recovering from injuries she suffered when she jumped from the 11th floor of an apartment building.
Judge Suzana Ortiz ordered her held without bail.
Police say the bloodshed occurred in an apartment on Chicago’s South Side on Thursday, where she was staying with her grandfather, Cardell Walker.
Newell turned on the hot water in a bathtub and let it run. When Walker went in to use the bathroom, Newell crept up behind him, put him in a chokehold and hit him with a towel bar. She then went to the kitchen, grabbed a knife and stabbed Walker more than 10 times.
Walker is hospitalized in critical condition but he is expected to live, prosecutors said.
Newell then stabbed her 7-month-old son, Ameer Newell, 19 times in the head before dunking him face first in the scalding hot bath water.
She then cut a hole in a window screen and threw 2-year-old Johntavis Newell through the hole before crawling through the window herself and falling 11 stories to the ground.
Scaffolding around the third floor broke her fall as she landed on the sidewalk next to Johntavis.
Surveillance video captured the scene as mother and son hit the ground. Newell moved and sat up just as police and medics arrived on the scene. She suffered multiple fractures and other internal injuries.
Newell’s mother, Zera Newell, told The Chicago Sun-Times that Aleah asked her to come and get the boys on New Year’s Day. But when Zera Newell arrived at the apartment, Aleah Newell was gone.
Zera said Aleah took her children to a woman’s and children’s shelter operated by The Salvation Army. Newell asked workers there to take her sons. The Salvation Army told WBBM-TV that Newell stay overnight Monday and Tuesday at Shield of Hope, and left on Wednesday morning.
Zera said Aleah suffered from depression. “I thought she was over that,” Zera said.
In May, 2017 Aleah lost her older brother to suicide. Last summer, another brother posted a Facebook message saying his sister was in the hospital being treated for a psychological issue.
He asked for prayers: “May god show her the right path and let her not go down the same path as our brother.”
