Sushi Staples, Rock Island, Illinois mom hides the body of her 10 year old son, Zion Staples in a trash can in the garage. Death deemed suspicious. New update reveals boy was fatally shot.
##Update: Zion Staples, a 10-year-old boy found dead and stuffed in a trash can inside of his mother’s Illinois garage, died from a gunshot wound, a county coroner announced amid a pending investigation. The statement from Rock Island County coroner Brian Gustafson was issued Friday and comes roughly three weeks after police arrested Zion’s mother, Sushi Staples.
## Original story. An Illinois woman has been arrested after her 10-year-old son was found stuffed in a garbage can in his mother’s garage.
To date, police have not charged anyone with the boy’s death though they did deem it ‘suspicious’ in an initial autopsy report. The boy died in December and had been dead for 7 months prior to the discovery of his body.
Multiple calls to DCFS before any action was taken
Rock Island Police began the investigation on July 26 when 10-year-old Zion Staples was found dead in the garage, KAAL reported. The boy’s body had been there for seven months, investigators said.
An autopsy was conducted on Friday, with Rock Island County Coroner Brian Gustafson said preliminary results showed the death to be ‘suspicious and not natural.’
Zion’s mother, Sushi M. Staples, was arrested and charged with concealment of a death, obstruction of justice, and failure to report the death of a child.
The macabre discovery according to cops was made following a tip, Quad-City Times reported.
‘I had a dead raccoon in my backyard, and we put it in a garbage can, I mean, in a garbage bag and then put it in a garbage can. And I couldn’t even stand the smell waiting for garbage day,’ a neighbor told the outlet. ‘So I can’t imagine, that with the wind directions, that nobody would smell that.’
Mother continued to give evasive answers
A woman who tipped off authorities told KWQC she had made multiple calls to the Department of Children and Family Services in the past few months because Staples was making odd comments about her son.
During questioning, Staples allegedly lied to an officer about the whereabouts of Zion and claimed she had no son and that his birth certificate was fraudulent, according to a criminal complaint cited by KWQC.
It remained unclear whether school officials where the boy had presumably been enrolled had sought to discover the missing boy’s whereabouts. Also unclear is why it took multiple calls to DCFS before any action was taken?
Andre and Danielle Builta, who moved to the neighborhood last month, said there was never any indication of anything amiss at the house next door, where a seemingly happy family lived.
‘We saw that, we saw two girls. You know, coming sometimes, like out in the yard. I saw them drawing with chalk in the back driveway,’ Danielle told KWQC.
‘And with scooters out front of the garage, everything seemed really normal. They would wave when they saw us. And so we were like, ‘Oh, they seem pretty friendly,’’ she said.
Police released no further information, saying the investigation was still under way.
Staples who made her first court appearance on July 28, remained held on $500,000 bail pending an Aug. 15 hearing.
