Chicago authorities found a two-year-old boy alive in an apartment where his mother and grandfather were fatally shot inside.
The toddler’s mother, Javonni Jenkins’ co-workers were concerned when she never showed up to her shift at Holy Cross Hospital. Jenkins’ friend, Nicole Worth, FaceTimed her but Jenkins’ 2-year-old son answered, Worth told The Chicago Sun-Times.
“After a certain amount of time, you realize nobody has come to check on the baby. You know nobody was talking to the baby,” Worth told the outlet. “I could see that he had no clothes on; he was just in a diaper. So now something’s wrong.”
Worth notified authorities and requested them to do a welfare check, PEOPLE reported.
That’s when they discovered Jenkins, 27, and her father Curtis Hardman, 79, fatally shot.
“The whole time I had the baby on the phone, he was very content, playing with his toys,” Worth told reporters.
“We came a little too late. We saved the baby. That’s all we could do.”
“[The police officers] gave us the baby. They gave us [the child] and then we walked downstairs until they came in and informed us that [Jenkins] was gone,” another one of Jenkins’ friends who was at the scene said.
Deputy Chief Senora Ben of the Chicago Police Department made a statement saying the department received a phone call to do a welfare check on the 8100 block of South Drexel, where they found “two victims fatally deceased in the apartment.” She did not say if there was a suspect.
“There was a 2-year-old male on the scene, unharmed, and he was taken to the hospital,” Ben added.
“At this time this is an active investigation. I can’t give any other information,” she said, adding that it was an “isolated incident,” and there’s no cause for the community to be concerned.
CPD’s Deputy Director of News Affairs and Communications, Tom Ahern, posted on Twitter that the victims suffered gunshot wounds.
Jenkins’ cousin Germaine Owens said, “She doesn’t even have an enemy in this world. For somebody to take her life, you’ve got to be some demon or monster” and that the mother and son had a close bond.
“We had get-togethers and he would be glued right to her side. If you see [Javonni], you’re going to see the baby.”
Owens also described Jenkins’ father as an amazing father and grandfather who took care of his daughter as a solo parent after her mother died when she was just 4.
A GoFundMe has been started to help raise money for the child, “who lost the only parent he ever had,” the GoFundMe said.
