An Indiana woman is facing charges of reckless homicide following the tragic death of her 10-year-old foster son.
Court documents obtained by WGN, NBC Chicago and CBS Chicago detail how 10-year-old Dakota Levi Stevens died on April 25 – just two days after 48-year-old Jennifer Lee Wilson was captured on a Ring doorbell cam using her body weight in an alleged attempt subdue the child.
“I was laying on him and he was acting bad,” the 340-pound Wilson says in the video, which has been reviewed by police.
The incident took place outside of Wilson’s home in Liberty Township, with the affidavit revealing that Wilson sat on the boy for over five minutes.
Young Dakota reportedly could be heard screaming before he stopped moving and fell silent. NBC Chicago reported that Wilson asked if Dakota was “faking”, before she noticed that the child’s eyelids had gone pale.
The boy weighed just 90 pounds. Police say a lot of Wilson’s weight was directed to the child’s head and neck, per WGN News.
Concerned for his well-being, Wilson asked one of her daughters to call 911.
When emergency services arrived at the scene, they found Dakota unconscious and without a pulse.
Efforts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful, and he was airlifted to a hospital in South Bend, where he was pronounced dead two days later.
The local coroner’s office determined Dakota’s cause of death to be mechanical asphyxia, ruling it a homicide.
It has also been reported that – just minutes before being restrained by Wilson – Dakota had approached a neighbor, pleading to be adopted.
CBS Chicago reports that the boy allegedly asked the neighbor to adopt him because his biological parents would hit him in the face, per the affidavit.
The neighbor, however, did not observe any visible injuries on Dakota when Wilson arrived to retrieve him.
Speaking WGN News, Dakota’s former foster father, Hayden Hetzel, said that the boy did sometimes struggle to control his emotions, but that he was taught how to safely physically calm the child. “He was just a kid given a bad hand, but he made the best of every situation,” Hetzel said.
Following Dakota’s death, Wilson’s foster care license was revoked, and she is no longer permitted to care for children.
She was arrested on July 13 in Berrien County, Michigan, after an arrest warrant was issued in Indiana.
Wilson remains in custody pending extradition, facing charges that could lead to up to six years in prison if convicted of reckless homicide.
Our thoughts go out to Dakota’s loved ones following this horrendous tragedy.
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