Klent Elwoods, on the left, and Lisa Jones, on the right, appear inset against an image of the Comer Children’s Hospital where their abused granddaughter died on July 15, 2023. (Park Forest Police Department; Screengrab via WLS)
Shocking new details have emerged in a child abuse case from the suburbs of Chicago where a 5-year-old girl was allegedly beaten to death by her grandfather over potty training issues.
Klent Elwoods, 62, and Lisa Jones, 57, stand accused of one count each of murder in the first degree for the death of their grandchild, Jada Moore, 5, who succumbed to a series of injuries at Comer Children’s Hospital in Chicago late Saturday morning.
A spokesperson for the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office told Law&Crime in an email that the girl’s manner of death was a homicide that was caused by “[m]ultiple injuries due to child abuse.”
The underlying incident occurred late on the night of July 14, when Park Forest police and paramedics were sent to a house on Osage Street due to a 911 call about an “unresponsive” 5-year-old girl.
“I was beating my little granddaughter and now she is out of it,” Elwoods allegedly readily admitted to a 911 dispatcher, prosecutors said in court on Monday, according to local NBC affiliate WMAQ.
And the admissions continued to come, according to a redacted Park Forest Police Department incident report obtained by Law&Crime.
“Elwoods stated that [Jada] had defecated on herself and he began to ‘beat her,”” the report says – citing one officer’s perspective.
“Elwoods and his wife, Lisa C. Jones…were the only people inside the residence when [Jada] was injured,” the report says in a different section – citing a second officer’s perspective. “Furthermore, Elwoods made admissions to ‘beating’ [Moore].”
At one point, in the back of a police cruiser, when asked for custodial information, Elwoods allegedly “went on a spontaneous rant,” police say. The girl’s grandfather allegedly said: “I was a little too rough with my grand baby.”
In her own interviews with police, Jones allegedly provided additional details into her granddaughter’s death.
“Jones stated that [Jada] has a history of ‘pooping’ on herself,” the report reads. “The last time [Jada] defecated on herself, Elwoods told her that he was going to punish her by whipping her with a belt.”
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And that, according to the girl’s grandmother, is exactly what her grandfather did, according to the report.
At around 8:30 p.m., “Jones and Elwoods discovered that Moore defecated on herself again,” the report says. The grandparents then asked her why she had done so – but were allegedly not much interested in the girl’s excuse for the bathroom accident.
According to the report: “Elwoods then reminded [Jada] what he would do if she defecated on herself again. Elwoods then grabbed a belt and had [Jada] bend over. Elwoods then proceeded to strike [Jada] on her buttocks between 10 and 12 times.”
With each strike of the belt, the girl fell onto the floor, Jones allegedly told police. The final time she was hit with the belt, Jada fell down onto the family room floor and did not get up.
In court on Monday, prosecutors reportedly noted that both Jones and Elwoods admitted to regularly beating their granddaughter – using the belt, their hands, and even a shoe to mete out punishment.
Jones “admitted that both defendants had been beating [Jada] as early as one month after [she] came to reside with them,” a prosecutor said during the hearing, according to WMAQ.
But Jada was only with her grandparents in the first place because it was supposed to better than what her mother could provide. Prosecutors said the girl’s mother needed some time to look for a job in earnest after she had “fallen on hard times.”
The girl’s mother lives in an Atlanta “trap house,” the police report says – relying on the testimony of a woman who identified herself to law enforcement as the deceased girl’s aunt.
In March, Elwoods visited Jada and her mother “and saw the conditions” in which they were living, the report says. “Elwoods decided to bring [Jada] back with him to Park Forest in hopes of a better home life.”
A doctor at the children’s hospital relayed the girl’s fate, the incident report says: her heart had stopped three separate times since she was under medical supervision. She died a short while later.
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