Killer gets life sentence
He stabbed his baby, man to death, hurt 2
A man who fatally stabbed his own baby and another man and wounded two others during a jealous rage last year was sentenced to life in prison Friday, with no chance of parole for 60 years.
Ruben Garcia, 21, was charged in the Jan. 23, 2015, attacks and later pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree intentional homicide, but sought to be found legally not responsible due to mental illness.
A jury in January found that Garcia suffered from a mental disease or defect, but that it did not prevent him from appreciating the wrongfulness of his actions, or conforming his actions to the law.
Garcia and Alexia Dailey, 21, had been living together a couple of years and had a daughter together in August 2014, Kairii. But the relationship had been abusive, Dailey said, and the couple split up and Dailey began dating Christopher Hamilton.
In January 2015, after Garcia saw video on social media of Hamilton playing with 5-month-old Kairii, he asked Dailey if he could come over and see the child. During the visit, he demanded to get back together. When Dailey refused, he stabbed her with an unusual, hookshaped knife with a 9-inch blade and saw teeth on the curved section.
Hamilton appeared and was stabbed, then Dailey’s godfather, Paul Kucharczyk, 39, was stabbed. Dailey escaped to a bathroom, locked the door and called 911. Garcia later broke down the door and demanded Dailey stab him, but she refused.
When police arrived at the duplex near N. 39th St. and Clybourn St., they found Kucharczyk and Kairii dead, and Dailey and Hamilton severely wounded. Garcia, still at the scene, was arrested.
On Friday, Dailey told the court about her struggles to cope with her injuries and the anguish of the crime, but said she plans to become a special-education teacher, concentrating on math.
Garcia told Circuit Judge Stephanie Rothstein that he was sorry for all the suffering he caused, but that what he did wasn’t really him, but spirits and voices he heard until going on medication in jail.
“I didn’t expect this to happen,” he said. “I’m ready to go get corrected.”
His attorney, Reyna Morales, said Garcia’s problems were in part attributable to a low IQ and the effects of lead poisoning as a child and asked that he get placement at the state’s forensic mental hospital in Mendota, where he would have been sent if found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Rothstein said that is entirely up to the Department of Corrections.
Dailey and her grandfather plan to speak with the news media about domestic violence on Sunday at the Sojourner Family Peace Center, at 11:30 a.m.