A Chicago woman, who already had a record of child abuse, was arrested and charged with beating her 2-year-old daughter so badly that the girl later died. Police say the mother was upset that the child would not eat her noodles.
Authorities charged Jazmine Jones, 18, with punching her toddler four to five times in the stomach and back on November 28. The woman then left the injured child in the care of her boyfriend while she went out to buy marijuana, Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Przekota said.
State’s Attorney Przekota said that the boyfriend told police that the blows on little Elliana’s body were so hard that he felt he would have had the wind knocked out of himself were he hit that hard.
Officials reported on Wednesday that the woman admitted that she had hit the child because the girl was not eating her dinner. She also allegedly told prosecutors that she had often punched the girl as a form of corporal punishment.
Przekota said that the evening Jones beat the girl and after she came back from getting her marijuana, she gave the girl some laxatives because she “seemed sick” and was complaining about stomach pain.
More ominously, later that evening, the woman’s boyfriend—who is not the child’s father—found the girl at the bottom of the stairs and felt that she had fallen. The mother was then urged to take the child to the hospital but refused.
When the couple put the child to bed that night, both say she was still alive. But some time during the night, the girl perished from her internal injuries, prosecutors said.
By the time the couple brought the child to the hospital, she was already in full rigor mortis.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office reported that the death blow came from a punch to the abdomen.
Przekota also reported that the woman has a record of abuse already. Last year, for instance, authorities say that Jones threw the child off a balcony.
ABC reports that Judge Laura Sullivan ordered Jones held in lieu of $1 million bail.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston, or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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