The parents of an eight-year-old boy have been arrested after their son stopped breathing weighing just 38 pounds.
Peoria, Illinois authorities have announced that Brandon Walker, 40, and Stephanie Jones, 35, have been charged with first-degree murder. Their bond has been set at $1m each and they could face life in prison.
Peoria Police said in a 30 March statement that police were called to a home the day before and found Navin Jones, eight, “unresponsive and ... not breathing”.
In a later update, the department said that “detectives were able to identify” Jones and Walker “as suspects in this investigation”.
Following interviews with the parents, they were “arrested for Endangering the Life or Health of a Child that resulted in the child’s death,” police said.
“On Wednesday, March 30, 2022, the Peoria County Coroner ruled the preliminary cause of death was due to physical abuse and neglect,” the department added.
Records show that the Department of Children & Family Services (DCFS) was involved with the family until the day Navin died, WCBU reported.
Navin’s paternal grandmother obtained legal custody of the eight-year-old and his 12-year-old sibling in April 2017. But both children were most recently living with their parents. DFCS was helping them get temporary guardianship in February and March.
Police reports state that Navin was “extremely malnourished with a skeletal appearance”. He had several bruises, scrapes, abrasions, and scars on his body. Both of his wrists also appeared to suffer from ligature injuries.
Peoria County Coroner Jamie Hardwood ruled the death a homicide and said it was one of the worse instances of abuse he had ever seen.
Prosecutor Dave Kenny said at a Thursday bond hearing that the abuse appeared to have been ongoing and that the last time Navin appeared to be at least somewhat healthy was in October.
Navin was put in state care in December 2013 after being born with narcotics in his system. Records show that DCFS knew of Jones before the children were born. She gave birth in 2006 to a child who died after three months. Walker wasn’t the father. DCFS found the death to be “indicated due to the circumstances surrounding evidence of unsafe sleep” – meaning that credible evidence suggested that abuse had occurred.
Navin’s older sibling, of whom Walker is the father, was born prematurely in January 2010. A court granted the custody of this child to DCFS because of “noted concerns of prior child death” and because Jones “may be living with individuals who were found unfit”.
The custody was returned to the parents in January 2012. When Navin was born in December 2013, both were transferred to state care, where they remained until their paternal grandmother received custody in 2017.
The grandmother, who is unnamed in DCFS records, left the children with their parents between 10 July and 1 August of last year to travel to Florida for a “family emergency”. When she returned, the parents “refused to return” the children. The grandmother called both the Peoria Police Department and the DCFS hotline to report the circumstances.
A Peoria police report from 17 August states that the grandmother said she was “done dealing with this and was just going to go back to court and have the children put in foster care”.
But on 19 August, she filed a report with a police department in Washington state, trying to get the children back and requested a “complete welfare check”.
DCFS records state that they tried several times to find the children between August and October. Walker told Child Protective Services (CPS) on 24 August that he was away from home and that he “had no plans of returning to Illinois ... [or] turning the children over to DCFS”.
On 14 October, he told DCFS that the family had moved to Florida and wasn’t going back to Illinois.
On 14 February of this year, an anonymous caller to the DCFS hotline alleged that Navin and his sibling were in Peoria, didn’t attend school and that they were “often dirty”.
The caller also said that the older sibling went to work with Walker every day, that Navin’s eyes were “black and blue”, that he was in trouble for “getting up in the middle of the night and eating chicken that Stephanie had cooked for their dogs”.
The caller added that Walker “talks down” to the older sibling and “calls him names”, and that Jones would lock Navin in the basement when she “wants to take a nap or doesn’t want to deal with him”.
During a CPS visit on 22 February, both children “denied anyone was hurting them” and “that anyone locks up or hurts” them. CPS said Navin seemed “sickly”, and that he was thin and small. While he didn’t have black eyes, he did have “pick marks” on his hands, WCBU reported.
Jones claimed that Navin “eats all the time but does not gain weight”. The investigator said she would aid the parents in getting “short-term guardianship” of the children, “to remove any barriers” to medical care. Both children were assessed as safe.
A Lutheran Social Services of Illinois caseworker told CPS on 23 February that they had talked with Jones about concerns that Navin was playing with faeces. The next day, CPS told Peoria Police Department that both parents “denied any abuse” following allegations of human trafficking.
The grandmother signed paperwork to grant short term guardianship to the parents on 14 March and again on 29 March – the day Navin died.
According to the police, Navin had ligature marks, bedsores, and his bedroom contained piles of sheets soaked in urine. When he arrived at the hospital, he weighed 38 pounds and had a body temperature of 72 degrees (22.2C).
The arraignment for Walker and Jones is set for 28 April in Peoria County court. While initially represented by a public defender, Walker has indicated he aims to hire a defence lawyer.
Funeral services for Navin were set to take place on Tuesday at 10am at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Morton with burial in Swan Lake Memory Gardens in Peoria, according to his obituary in the Journal Star.
