Terrence Space Chicago man charged with beating girlfriend’s 3 year old toddler daughter, Lehlani Edwards to death. But is there more than meets the eye?
An Illinois man was ordered held on $1 million bail on Sunday for allegedly beating his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter to death on Chicago’s West Side.
Terrence Space, 23, of Chicago admitted to being home with girl the hours before her death Friday, but denied causing her injuries, Cook County prosecutors said.
Lehlani Edwards‘ autopsy found she died of child abuse. She had internal bleeding, and bruising and abrasions to her face, arms and torso, prosecutors said according to the Chicago Tribune.
The night of her death, Space was at his mother’s Austin home alone with the child from 6 p.m. to just after midnight Friday, prosecutors said. Surveillance allegedly video shows no one else enter the home throughout the night.
Just after midnight, Space called his girlfriend and told her Lehlani wouldn’t wake up, prosecutors said. The mother ran back to the home, found her daughter unresponsive and called 911.
Social media questions mother’s potential complicity
Space told her he couldn’t be there when cops arrived and fled through the back door, prosecutors said.
Lehlani was taken to West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, where she was pronounced dead at 1:21 a.m., officials said.
Space, who lives in Austin, was arrested in southwest suburban Bolingbrook, according to police.
Social media commentators have since questioned the girlfriend’s potential complicity in the toddler’s death, with one individual writing, ‘I think that baby was deceased prior to her dropping that baby off bc what was the point of her dropping her off to not go anywhere & by him looking crazy & having a condition she thought it was going to easily be put off on him but the medical examiner will b able to tell how long that baby was dead so she better think on it.’
Space, who had been dating Lehlani’s mother since February, has been charged with first-degree murder in the child’s killing.
The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services is investigating the girl’s death, a spokesperson for the department said.
Space was unable to appear in bond court Sunday as he was being treated in St. Anthony Hospital for Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a severe skin condition.
Space is due back in court Tuesday.
