The death of a 19-month-old found unresponsive and bloody in a Cabrini-Green apartment has been ruled a homicide, the Cook County medical examiner’s office said Friday.
The ruling followed an autopsy showing the boy had broken ribs, numerous bruises on his head, chest and abdomen, as well as a bruised lung and lacerations to his heart and pancreas.
No one was in custody as police continued to investigate Semaj Rice’s death, and state officials removed two other young children from the apartment of Semaj’s grandmother, with whom the boy had been living for the last few weeks
“We need to be sure that they’ll be safe during the time that it takes to determine who killed Semaj,” said John Goad, deputy director of the Department of Children and Family Services.
“It’s a very sad story. I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I never get used to it.”
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Investigators are trying to sort out the latest incident in the family’s tangled and troubled history.
Semaj’s grandmother, Thomasa Brown, said she was taking care of the boy because her daughter, Natalia Morgan, 34, was a drug addict and had been living in a boarded-up, vacant apartment in the same building with several other women. Morgan also has convictions for retail theft, prostitution and armed robbery, according to court officials.
Drugs played a central role in the removal of Morgan’s four other children in 1994 and 1995. Goad said DCFS received a report in 1994 that one of Morgan’s children had been born with drugs in his system. Investigators determined the allegation was true in August 1994 and removed her three children.
In 1995, after Morgan had another baby, that child also was removed after substantiated reports of inadequate supervision and medical neglect, Goad said. Three of the four children, now 6, 7 and 12, are living with new families after spending time in foster care, Goad and Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy said.
“The mother hadn’t shown up to any court proceeding for years, and that’s why they were adopted,” Murphy said.
The fourth child, Iyanna Brown, 16, who also had been living in Brown’s apartment, is a ward of the state and wasn’t supposed to be living there, Murphy said.
“She’s on the run from foster care,” Murphy said.
Morgan lost another child in 1991 when the infant died less than two months after birth. The Cook County medical examiner’s office listed dehydration as the cause of death but noted the manner of death was “undetermined.”
The death, which occurred while the baby was living with his great-grandmother, was not classified as a homicide, and no charges were filed, Goad said.