A Florida mother has been charged with the murder of her 4-year-old son more than a decade after the boy was found dead in her apartment.
Destene Simmons faces one count of murder and one count of aggravated child abuse, WFOR reported.
The Broward State Attorney’s Office has not explained why it waited eleven years after Antwan “A.J” Hope’s June 10, 2013, death to file charges.
According to WTVJ, the boy’s father had legal custody at the time of his death, but he was at his mother’s apartment. She called 911 three times that day, twice hanging up without providing an address — using a cell phone that couldn’t be traced — and the third time providing an address but not answering when police arrived.
Police finally made entry into the appartment and found the boy dead. Simmons was questioned about the boy’s death but later released.
The child’s father filed two wrongful death lawsuits in the years following the boy’s death, but both were dismissed by the courts. The lawsuits alleged that Simmons killed the boy during an unsupervised visit or that she neglected him because of her mental illness. The father also alleged Simmons had tried to suffocate the boy with a pillow two years earlier.
That act had prompted her involuntary commitment to a mental hospital after her mother called police to report the incident, WFOR reported. The mother told deputies that Simmons had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression and had been hospitalized three times in the months before her son died.
The Florida Department of Children and Families said in 2013 that the father did have custody but they were preparing to reunited the mother and child. The boy was found dead during Simmons first unsupervised visit with him since she had lost custody.
