A Chicago woman drowned her son when she walked into Lake Michigan and let go of the 14-month-old boy, Cook County prosecutors alleged Tuesday.
Finding that she is a danger to the public and apparently suffering from a mental health crisis, a Cook County judge ordered Surah Amon detained following a hearing at the Leighton Criminal Court Building viewed by family members who sobbed in the courtroom’s gallery. Amon, 31, is charged with murder.
For months leading up the drowning, police were called to Amon’s address multiple times, prosecutors said, and she was also subject to an order of protection that barred her from contact with the baby’s father and grandmother.
On Friday, after the father and grandmother asked her to leave the residence, she took her son to South Shore Beach about 9:45 p.m. and walked into the water with him in an attempt to kill herself and the child, Assistant State’s Attorney Todd Kleist said.
“She is the person who is supposed to protect this child,” Kleist said. “If she is capable of doing this to a helpless and innocent child, she is capable of doing harm to anyone else she comes in contact with.”
Beachgoers who observed her in the water called 911, according to Kleist. When authorities arrived, Amon was screaming that she killed her son and wanted to die, he said.
At one point, Kleist said, Amon slit her wrists.
Rescuers pulled the child from the water, but he was unresponsive as they rushed him to the hospital, Kleist said.
Amon admitted to detectives that she killed her son, prosecutors said.
Amon’s public defender said she is homeless, but does have family members willing to take her in, if the judge were to allow her to be released on electronic monitoring.
Judge Susana Ortiz, though, ordered Amon jailed while she awaits trial.
“The behavior kept escalating despite that order of protection,” Ortiz said.
The boy’s drowning is at least the third time in recent months that a family member has been accused of killing a relative while undergoing an apparent mental health crisis.
In Streamwood in May, a 25-year-old man who reported hearing voices and having dissociative feelings allegedly fatally stabbed his sisters, Janiya Jenkins, 21, and Eyani Jones, 10. Jalonie Jenkins is charged with two counts of murder.
On the Fourth of July, a woman killed one of her children and injured two others before setting fire to their Logan Square home, prosecutors have alleged. According to a health care order filed in court, Wendy Tolbert, who is charged with murder, reported that she suffers from schizophrenia and cancer.