New Year’s tragedy exposes big gap in mental health care
The silence surrounding the unspeakable horror in a quiet stretch of South Shore Drive speaks volumes about the city’s tattered safety net.
I know this net is sturdy enough for the folks who have access to minute clinics.
But how do we put our faith in a system that sends a 20-year-old suicidal mother of two home (after an apparent mental breakdown) with a “diagnosis of a mood disorder and a prescription.”
You don’t have to be a psychiatrist or preacher to know that isn’t right. How could a person in that condition possibly take care of two babies?
Still, it seems like most of us don’t have a problem with it.
That is what struck me on Monday morning as I passed by the high-rise building where the tragedy happened.
It was as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred there.
There was the Monday morning drone of buses and cars; the knot of people waiting at the bus shelter; a young man walking briskly down the sidewalk.
But just a few days ago, on this very sidewalk, an obviously deranged woman crashed from 11 stories after allegedly killing her own children.
In a court hearing Saturday, prosecutors charged Aleah Newell with stabbing her 70-year-old grandfather nearly a dozen times; stabbing and fatally scalding her 7-month-old son in a bathtub; and hurling her 2-year-old from the 11th-floor apartment before leaping to what she hoped would be her death.
It was a miracle that a scaffold broke her fall and she survived with a broken wrist and ankle. Her grandfather had been in critical condition, though he was expected to live. Her babies are dead.
Newell is charged with two murders and an attempted murder and is facing a possible life sentence behind bars.
At the South Shore address, on Monday, where this unspeakable tragedy occurred, workers prepared to scale the building using one of the other scaffolds hanging from the high-rise, and a garbage truck idled loudly as workers piled on their routine haul.
You could walk right by without knowing that such a diabolical act had taken place.
There were no banners with loving messages tied to poles or flowers piled up in bunches; no stuffed teddy bears or action figures; no marchers or protesters demanding more be done to help save women suffering from mental illness.
Most people will only see Newell as a monster.
But apparently there were moments when Newell tried to shoulder her responsibilities and cried out for help.
For instance, according to prosecutors, two days before the tragedy, Newell had taken the 2-year-old to Comer Children’s Hospital for treatment for his asthma.
Prosecutors said the distraught woman had asked her mother on New Year’s Eve to pick up her boys so she could “get her life together.”
But when Newell’s mother, Zera Newell, got there last Wednesday, her daughter and the boys weren’t home, according to prosecutors.
The distraught mother had spent New Year’s Eve and the day before in Humboldt Park at Shield of Hope, a homeless shelter run by the Salvation Army.
Shield of Hope is an emergency homeless assessment and rapidresponse center, according to a statement the agency put out in the wake of this tragedy.
“Despite reports in recent days, no family has been, nor will be turned away. Our doors are open to all who seek respite,” the statement said, according to WGN.
The shelter verified that Newell checked out of the facility on New Year’s Day.
“We continue to pray for the family and those impacted by this tragedy,” the statement added.
But shouldn’t they have put some “rapid-response action” behind those prayers, especially since Newell allegedly told another woman at the shelter, “I can’t do this. I can’t take care of them’’?
Additionally, Zera Newell told the Chicago Sun-Times her daughter had asked staff at the shelter to take the children away from her.
But under these circumstances, how could an agency that is supposed to serve people in a crisis situation let such a troubled woman walk out of the shelter on New Year’s Day with two toddlers in tow?
Jassen Strokosch, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services said, “A parent attempting suicide does not automatically mean a child is removed from a home.
“Every family is different. DCFS would assess the entirety of the situation. For example, does the parent who attempted suicide have other family supports they can rely on? Are there two parents involved or one? Are [there] grandparents or an aunt or uncle involved that can step in to care for the children? DCFS would assess many of these options before a judge would remove a child from a home,” he said in an email.
According to FBI Statistics, 450 children are murdered by their parents each year in the U.S.
Last month, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a plan for public agencies to “coordinate with one another as well as mental health providers when responding to emergency calls,” the Chicago SunTimes reported.
Hopefully, this new effort will help save other desperate women and their children.