Inset: Llovana Torres (Chicago Police Department). Background: Apartment complex where Torres allegedly stabbed her 7-year-old son in Chicago (WBBM).
Cops in Illinois arrested a 26-year-old woman after she allegedly stabbed her 7-year-old son with a kitchen knife because he made a mess overnight.
Llovana Torres stands accused of aggravated battery of a child, Chicago police said in a press release. The incident occurred Saturday morning in the 1700 block of West Touhy Street. According to a court filing by the Cook County State Attorney’s Office, Torres spent all night cleaning the apartment before bed but when she awoke the next morning, she saw her son had put the home back into disarray.
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Torres became angry and allegedly hit the boy several times. He then ran into a kitchen and crawled into the cabinet below the sink to avoid the beating, prosecutors said. The defendant tried to pull her son from the cabinet but was unsuccessful. She then grabbed a silver kitchen knife and started stabbing until she heard him say “ouch,” attorneys for the state wrote.
The boy started bleeding and Torres grabbed him and ran downstairs to her mother’s apartment, according to prosecutors. He was suffering from a stab wound to the abdomen and Torres’ mother “demanded” she take him to the hospital “right away.” Torres obliged and rushed him to Evanston Hospital.
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Medical personnel airlifted the boy to a children’s hospital where he had to undergo emergency surgery because of a ruptured diaphragm, per prosecutors. The wound required multiple sutures to close. As of Monday, he remained hospitalized with a chest tube/ventilator in place.
Detectives spoke with Torres’ mother and 11-year-old cousin. The cousin allegedly told cops that he heard Torres tell her mother that she had told the victim that if he didn’t come out of the cabinet, she would “cut or stab him,” according to the proffer. After cops arrested Torres, the cousin also allegedly heard Torres tell her mother to “not tell anyone what had happened and to tell a different story,” prosecutors wrote.
Post Miranda, prosecutors allege Torres told detectives she “accidentally stabbed” her son when she was “waving the knife around” while trying to find the victim under the cabinet. She identified the knife she used and cops later recovered it.
A judge Monday ordered Torres to be held in jail. Her next court date is scheduled for June 13.
