GINA PRESLEY - 3 yo - / Accused: Jessie Rodriguez, boyfriend - Oak Forest, IL

$10M bail set for Illinois man accused of killing girl, 3

Jessie Rodriguez was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Gina Presley.

By Alexandria Fisher, NBCChicago.com

A 42-year-old Illinois man was given a $10 million bail Sunday after he was charged in the death of a 3-year-old girl in Oak Forest, according to police.

Jessie Rodriguez was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Gina Presley, Oak Forest police said Saturday.

Police escorted a man out of the hearing after he began screaming that Rodriguez did not deserve bail.

Read more stories on NBCChicago.com

Rodriguez, the boyfriend of Gina’s aunt and guardian, without justification killed the 3-year-old girl with blunt for trauma to the head, police said.

Another “person of interest” originally taken into custody was released and is cooperating with the investigation, officials said.

Rodriguez has been in custody since Thursday, but did not appear in bond court today despite police indications.

An adult in Gina’s home in the 15300 block of Walnut Road in Oak Forest reportedly called 911 to report the young girl was choking. She was later pronounced dead at Palos Community Hospital.

The Illinois Department for Children and Family services said Gina was never in their custody, despite reports from Oak Forest police that said she was.

“This is not consolation for the family or the community and only begins to provide a response to such a horrific act,” Chief of Police Gregory Anderson said in a statement.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/01/17550416-10m-bail-set-for-illinois-man-accused-of-killing-girl-3?lite

Unfortunately we don't have the death penalty in Illinois any more. Something we need to bring back for people like this. And why give any one like this a chance for bail. He's a threat to all children. William

$10M bail for man charged in slaying of 3-year-old

March 31, 2013|By Jennifer Delgado and Rosemary Regina Sobol Tribune reporters

A judge set bail at $10 million during an emotional hearing Sunday at Cook County Bond Court for a man accused of killing a 3-year-old girl in southwest suburban Oak Forest.

After Judge James Brown set bail for Jessie B. Rodriguez, a man sitting in the courtroom stood up and started yelling and cursing. "There should be no bail!" he said.
Cook County sheriff's deputies told the man to leave, but he continued to yell, saying the 3-year-old was "my baby." Four deputy officers jumped on the man and held him to the floor as he cried loudly. The deputies then cleared the courtroom for about 10 minutes.

Rodriguez, 43, of the 2900 block of North Kenneth Avenue in Chicago, has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Gina Presley.

Sometime in December 2012, Rodriguez began dating the victim's aunt, who had been the baby's caregiver since the child was 6 months old, Assistant State's Attorney Christina Kye said. Rodriguez then moved in with them in the 15300 block of Walnut Road in Oak Forest, she added.

At some point, other family members noticed that Rodriguez was controlling and saw bruising on Gina's body as well as changes in her personality and behavior, Kye said.

On March 26, Gina's aunt went to work and left the toddler with Rodriguez. Sometime after she returned, Rodriguez told her the baby had been choking. When paramedics arrived, they found the child unresponsive, Kye said.

The toddler was pronounced dead at 12:15 a.m. March 27 at Palos Community Hospital. An autopsy found Gina died of blunt force trauma to the head, Kye said.

Along with vomit all over the room, Gina had a large bruise on her face and investigators discovered that she had been dead for a while, Kye said.

Another person who was questioned in the child's death has been released and is cooperating with authorities, according to a statement from Oak Forest Police.

People associated with Gina were cooperating to determine what happened, Oak Forest Police Chief Gregory Anderson said in the statement.

"When you see a child lose their life, it affects everyone. Not only the family, it affects the whole community. This is a horrific crime on the most innocent of victims," Anderson said.

Rodriguez was convicted in 1991 for possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver and in 1992 for unlawful use of a weapon by a felon, prosecutors said.

Kye asked Brown for a high bail, saying Rodriguez was "placed in a position of power and trust."

The man who screamed during the hearing was later released and walked out of the courtroom. He did not identify himself and did not speak with reporters after he left the courtroom. Another man who was with him declined to speak.

Brown ordered Rodriguez to surrender his passport and any weapons. He is scheduled to appear in court April 2.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-03-31/news/chi-boyfriend-of-aunt-charged-in-slaying-of-3yearold-20130330_1_rodriguez-3-year-old-girl-cook-county-bond-court

"family members noticed that Rodriguez was controlling and saw bruising on Gina's body as well as changes in her personality and behavior" and him being a convicted felon. Why was he allowed to be around her at all. This was avoidable and the aunt should be charged. William

Another horrible baby death. This time it is a POS aunt and another POS man.

This woman had to know what was happening to this helpless child.

November 15, 2013

By Tony Arnold, Chris Fusco and Monifa Thomas


Updated 11/15/13: Richard Calica, director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, resigned his position today.

A statement from the governor's office said the resignation is due to a serious illness. 
 
About a month before 3-year-old Gina Presley died, her grandfather says he began calling the state’s child-abuse hotline, worried about her safety.
 
Days passed, and nothing happened.
 
So Gerald Presley went to the Oak Forest police on March 11, telling them there might be “drug use” in the home where Gina lived with his sister — her legal guardian — and his sister’s new boyfriend, records show. Presley says the police told him to call the hotline again, and he did.

Eight days later, Illinois child-welfare officials asked police to make a “well-being check” on Gina, based on “reports of her having bruises,” according to a police report.

When officers got there that evening, no one was home.

A week later, Gina was found dead, allegedly killed by the boyfriend who had caused Gerald Presley’s concern, prompting him to call the child-abuse hotline “at least” three times.

“I started calling at the end of February or in early March, but they didn’t take me seriously,” Presley says. “You see what happened.”

What happened is part of an alarming trend in Illinois: More kids are dying from child abuse and neglect, and a growing number of those deaths are occurring despite the child-welfare system’s involvement in investigating or monitoring their care, a WBEZ and Chicago Sun-Times examination of 10 years of neglect and abuse cases has found.

RISING TOLL: Interactive Charts

For the 12 months ending June 30, 2013, child deaths statewide caused by abuse or neglect hit a 30-year high, according to data from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, with the number of cases topping 100 for the first time since 1989.

Agency officials say most of the abuse and neglect deaths — about three out of four — did not involve households the department had prior contact with, though it isn’t clear how they determined that. DCFS doesn’t release year-by-year statistics on the number of children dying as a result of abuse or neglect while the agency is investigating or monitoring them.

What WBEZ and the Sun-Times found, though, was that abuse and neglect deaths in which the department had prior involvement more than doubled between 2010 and 2011 — from 15 deaths to 34. There were 34 deaths again in 2012, 15 of them caused by abuse and 19 by neglect.

To determine how many abuse and neglect deaths there were in cases involving families with whom the agency was involved, WBEZ and the Sun-Times reviewed the annual reports produced by DCFS Inspector General Denise Kane. Those reports list the cause of death for children whose families had contact with the agency within one year of the death and for children who were wards of the state when they died.

Of the 19 DCFS-involved neglect deaths, 11 involved infants being smothered or falling after being placed in dangerous sleeping conditions. Such deaths often weren’t classified as neglect until late 2011, when DCFS began pressing its investigators to discipline parents who had been educated about sleep safety or who had placed their children in unsafe sleep conditions because of alcohol or drug use.

Because Kane’s analysis is limited to “the deaths of Illinois children whose families were involved in the child-welfare system within the preceding 12 months,” the number of deaths in families with whom DCFS had been involved could be higher.

Elijah Mims, a 4-year-old South Holland boy, was one of those her analysis did not count. He died while being treated for lymphangiomatosis, a rare disease in which non-malignant tumors attack the body.

Elijah’s 13-year-old brother found him “face-down on his bed with white foam around his mouth” on Feb. 12, 2012, according to a Cook County medical examiner’s report. Elijah died two days later from what authorities concluded was an accidental overdose of morphine. South Holland police reported the case to DCFS “as suspected child abuse” and continue to investigate, records show.

DCFS had investigated Elijah’s home five times, including twice in 2008, when child-protection officials found the accusations to be credible, the Sun-Times reported after his death.

Elijah’s case isn’t among those Kane includes in her 2012 report, though. That’s because his family’s most recent contact with DCFS had been more than a year earlier, the cutoff point for her analysis.

Attempts to reach Elijah’s parents were unsuccessful.

Even when deaths occur within the one-year window, some cases still might not be counted because DCFS officials rely on “coroners, hospitals and law enforcement in Illinois to report child deaths,” Kane writes. “The deaths are not always reported. Therefore, true statistical analysis of child deaths in Illinois is difficult because the total number of children that die in Illinois each year is unknown.”

The overall increase in the number of abuse and neglect deaths — regardless of whether DCFS was involved — is “troubling, and we need to figure it out,” says Benjamin S. Wolf, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois who monitors DCFS under a federal court order.

DCFS director Richard Calica says he has eliminated management positions and converted them to investigator jobs in an effort to improve child safety. Calica says that has reduced caseloads that were as high as 25 per investigator when he took over the agency nearly two years ago. His investigators now typically handle nine cases each.

Wolf says the higher number of DCFS-involved abuse and neglect deaths in 2011 and 2012 could reflect the high past caseloads.

“If you investigate late and you investigate sloppily, it’s more likely that something bad will happen to that child,” Wolf says. “Hopefully, the improvements we’ve made in the caseloads of investigators in the last year will cause some improvements in the coming years.”

Gina Presley appeared to be in a safe environment until her guardian, Kim DeBartolo, 45, filed for divorce late last year, and her new boyfriend, Jessie Rodriguez, moved in to her Oak Forest home. DeBartolo began caring for Gina — whose parents were teens when she was born — when she was 6 months old.
Rodriguez, who’d been convicted of gun and drug crimes in the early 1990s and sentenced to probation, is now being held at the Cook County Jail, where he awaits trial for murder in Gina’s death. The little girl died from “blunt force trauma due to child abuse,” authorities concluded.

Gerald Presley says he wishes his warnings to DCFS and the police could have gotten Gina out of harm’s way. “I know a lot of stuff falls through the cracks with them,” he says of DCFS.

Calica calls every child death “a horror” but says that, given the number of cases DCFS handles each year, “I think it’s real important to understand from a demographics standpoint that while any death is a horror, one out of 39,000 isn’t a bad error rate. I think it’s unfair to judge a system by a tragedy and have tragedies drive public policy and the entire system, when certain tragedies, I’m sorry, are not preventable.”

http://www.wbez.org/news/illinois-losing-more-children-child-abuse-and-neglect-any-time-last-30-years-109155

Gina Marie Presley, 3