Chicago: A 20-year-old Chicago woman faces murder charges after police say she killed two of her young sons, leaving one in a bathtub and throwing another from an 11th-floor apartment window before jumping herself.
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Aleah Newell of Chicago was charged with two counts of murder for the death of the boys, ages 2 years and 7 months. She also is charged with attempted murder for stabbing her grandfather before she jumped from the apartment building on Chicago’s South Side. She was scheduled to have a bond hearing on Saturday.
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Aleah Newell and her grandfather had been hospitalised in critical condition, police said Friday. There was no update on their condition on Saturday.
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Newell and her two-year-old son, Johntavis Newell, were found on the ground outside a high-rise around 2am. Thursday after police received a 911 call about a person injured on the street. Officers later found 7-month-old Ameer Newell in the bathtub of the 11th-floor apartment, along with the 70-year-old grandfather, who had been stabbed. Authorities have not released his name.
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They say Aleah Newell stabbed her grandfather and Ameer Newell several times before she set the infant in a “scalding” hot bath. She then threw Johntavis out the window and jumped herself. Scaffolding broke the woman’s fall, but she suffered several broken bones, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
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Her mother, Zera Newell, told the Sun-Times that Aleah Newell took her children to a women’s shelter earlier in the week and asked workers there to take her children. Zera Newell said her daughter had shown signs of depression in the past.
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“I thought she was over that,” Newell said, adding, “maybe behind closed doors it was another thing.”
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