A 20-year-old woman is accused of murdering her two young children and brutally attacking her grandfather before jumping through a window of an eleventh floor in Chicago.
The woman, Aleah Newell, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and an attempted first-degree murder for the death of her seven-month-old baby and her two-year-old son, according to a court document from the Office of Cook County State. Newell’s 70-year-old grandfather, who was not named, survived multiple stab wounds and is expected to survive.
Prosecutors said Newell was bathing in his grandfather’s apartment on New Year’s Day when his grandfather entered the bathroom. Newell then began to strangle him and used a towel rack to hit him on the head, they said.
According to the court document, she took a knife from the kitchen while her grandfather tried to recover from the assault and attacked him, stabbing him repeatedly even after he fell to the ground.
After his grandfather lost consciousness, Newell attacked Ameer, his seven-month-old son, with the knife before plunging him into the hot tub, prosecutors said. He left the baby in the bathtub while the tap was running, they said.
Newell’s attack continued as he aimed at Johntavis, the two-year-old boy, who was in the living room, according to the court document. Prosecutors said she picked up her son and threw him from the window of an eleventh floor. Johntavis suffered multiple head fractures and blunt trauma from the fall.
According to the state attorney, Newell jumped out the window about 20 seconds after throwing Johntavis. He went through the scaffold of a window cleaner that hung around the third floor and landed on the cement, but only suffered a fractured ankle and wrist, according to the court document.
A security woman found Johntavis and Newell on the ground and called 911. It was at that time that the tenant on the tenth floor called security to report that water was coming in through the roof, according to the court document.
The video of the body camera showed the officers forcing the entrance to the grandfather’s apartment, where they found the 70-year-old man “groaning in a pool of blood,” prosecutors said. A police officer tried to resuscitate Ameer but was unsuccessful. Newell, who underwent surgery for his ankle and wrist injuries, was held without bail, NBC Chicago reported.
The woman was diagnosed with a mood disorder in the summer after a suicide attempt, prosecutors said. He stayed in a homeless shelter for two days at the end of December before calling New Year’s Eve to ask his mother to pick up the children, according to the court document.
He told his mother that he wanted to “fix his life,” but Newell was already gone when his mother appeared Wednesday, according to the document.
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