Simone Austin Chicago mother slits 5 year old daughter Serenity Arrington at East Garfield Park residence. No known motive as mother waited for cops to arrest her.
An East Garfield Park woman is accused of stabbing her 5-year-old daughter to death over the weekend in Chicago’s West Side neighborhood.
Simone Austin, 27, was charged with one count of first-degree murder, Chicago police said.
Austin allegedly stabbed Serenity Arrington in the throat about 9:15 a.m. in the 3200 block of West Fulton Boulevard, Saturday morning, police said. She then approached officers at the scene, police said, before being taken into custody.
Arrington died shortly after at Stroger Hospital, and an autopsy ruled her death a homicide, saying she died of ‘multiple incised wounds to the neck.’
Detectives and prosecutors said Austin cut Serenity’s throat in front of her 8-year-old sister, using a serrated knife.
‘she shouldn’t have done this,’
Chicago police spokesman Tom Ahern confirmed via the Chicago Sun Times that Austin was Arrington’s mother.
Come Monday, Austin was ordered held without bond after she was charged with first-degree murder during an initial court appearance chicagocbslocal reports.
During Monday’s bond hearing, prosecutors said Serenity’s mother had asked the older girl to leave the room, as the 8 year old watched through a hole in the doorknob as Austin pulled the knife out from under a pillow and cut Serenity’s neck.
Prosecutors said the sister tried to pull Austin off Serenity by her hair. Her grandfather, who was also living in the same apartment, had gone out to get coffee at the time, and came back to find the front door locked. When he went to the kitchen door in back, the daughter told him her mom had stabbed her little sister.
Prosecutors said the grandfather saw Austin undressing when he got inside the apartment, and immediately went out to the porch as the older sister ran outside yelling that her mom had killed her sister.
That’s when Austin brought Serenity outside and laid her down on the grass. Neighbors saw her bleeding profusely from a gash in her throat, and heard her mother apologizing, saying ‘she shouldn’t have done this,’ prosecutors said.
The mother was observed patiently awaiting the arrival of authorities and willfully surrendering.
Prior involvement of child services
Of note, the Department of Children and Family Services had been called to the home in the past. Details were not immediately available.
‘We’ve had previous calls there for domestic violence where the mother was the victim of domestic violence and other people in the family called,’ Chicago Police Supt. David Brown said on Monday.
Prosecutors said Serenity’s older sister told investigators about a previous incident when she saw her walking around with a knife because the little girls had spilled some eggs on the porch.
Austin does not have a prior criminal background, officials said. Her defense attorney said she dropped out of high school and her parents were living on the street. She worked at Walmart until May 2020 where she stocked shelves. There is no indication that she has ever harmed her children before.
The whereabouts of the children’s father was not immediately known.
Detectives were investigating to see if Austin had a history of mental illness.
No known motive was known.
