A Chicago toddler is not expected to survive after his “severely mentally ill” aunt shoved him off a pier into Lake Michigan and watched as he drowned Monday.
Victoria Moreno, 34, kidnapped the 3-year-old boy from his family’s Des Plaines home and took him to the lake where she pushed him off the Navy Pier into the waters below.
Moreno allegedly stood by as the child struggled for 30 minutes before officers arrived and pulled him from the lake in “very critical condition.”
“Not once during any of these events did the defendant scream for help, call for help, ask for help or try herself to help,” Prosecutor Lorraine Scaduto said.
“When the police arrived, the defendant pretended not to know anything about the child.”
Moreno’s public defender said that the woman suffered from anxiety, depression, and insomnia seeking her release on bond, something Judge Susanna Ortiz rejected.
“The way I can describe this act is that it was intentionally brutal and heinous, and it was an act indicative of wanton cruelty to pus a child into the lake and let them suffer and struggle and provide no assistance whatsoever,” she said.
