Latest news with #JaydenPerkins
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Daily Mail
Wicked stepdad's disgraceful courtroom outburst as he is jailed for life over murder of boy, 11
A convicted domestic abuser who stabbed an 11-year-old boy to death as the child heroically tried to protect his pregnant mother has been sentenced to life in prison - but not before launching into a vile tirade during his sentencing hearing. Crosetti Brand, 39, was handed a natural life sentence plus 120 years by Cook County Judge Angela Petrone on Tuesday, nearly 18 months after the horrific murder of Jayden Perkins in Chicago 's Ravenswood neighborhood. Laterria Smith, Jayden's grieving mother, addressed Brand directly in court, telling him: 'You have taken away one of the greatest gifts God has blessed me with. I will never be ok… You came and destroyed my life.' The judge described Jayden as 'a beautiful, innocent boy' who died protecting his mother and called the killing 'exceptionally brutal.' But Brand, who represented himself at trial, showed no remorse. Appearing virtually from jail, he initially asked to skip the hearing altogether, sneering at the judge: 'You gonna give me life anyway, so it's like why the f*** am I sticking around?' He ultimately stayed - only to interrupt prosecutors repeatedly with outbursts and objections as they presented new evidence, including a chilling voicemail he left Smith just weeks before the attack: 'You keep moving how you motherf***ing moving… You gonna see what I'm talking about,' he said in the message. Prosecutors revealed that Brand had also mailed Smith graphic photos from Jayden's autopsy and made threatening phone calls from jail, pressuring his mother to drop the charges and issuing threats against Jayden's father, prosecutors, and even the judge herself. When Petrone finally handed down the sentence, Brand logged off Zoom in defiance, telling her: 'I know I can't change your mind… I'm at peace. I'm gonna take it up with the notice of appeal court.' The tragedy unfolded on March 13, 2024 - just hours after Brand was released from prison - when he broke into Smith's home and ambushed her and Jayden as they were leaving for school. According to prosecutors Brand had been lying in wait inside the apartment with clear intent to kill the woman who had rejected him. He grabbed Smith in a chokehold and stabbed her 15 times. When Jayden stepped in to defend his mom, Brand turned the knife on him. Jayden died from his injuries. Smith, who was pregnant at the time, survived - as did her unborn daughter. 'Jayden is the hero out of all of this, because he saved his mother and his brand new sister's life,' said Smith's uncle, Titus Washington. 'Jayden is the hero.' Assistant State's Attorney Danny Hanichak blasted Brand as a chronic abuser who had spent nearly his entire adult life either behind bars or facing charges, primarily for violence against women and children. Brand had only recently completed 8 years of a 16-year sentence for attacking another ex and pointing a gun at her young son. He was released in October 2023. Within months he had began stalking and threatening Smith. Though Smith repeatedly reported his behavior to authorities and the parole board, Brand was inexplicably released again on March 12. Less than 24 hours later, Jayden was dead. 'Nothing will ever rehabilitate this defendant; he is nothing more than a pathetic lifelong criminal,' Hanichak said. 'What this criminal never counted on is that one 11-year-old boy would put an end to Crosetti Brand's terror.' Brand's self-representation during the trial made proceedings chaotic and painful for the victims' family, as he was permitted to cross-examine witnesses and even call himself to the stand. Jurors took less than 90 minutes to convict him on all charges, including first-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated domestic battery, and home invasion. The case has since sparked outrage across Illinois and exposed grave flaws in the state's parole system. Two members of the Prisoner Review Board who authorized Brand's release resigned following the murder, and lawmakers have since passed legislation allowing victims to submit impact statements before parole decisions and seek restraining orders against parole candidates.
CBS News
7 days ago
- CBS News
Sentencing underway for man convicted of stabbing Chicago pregnant woman, killing her son
Sentencing has started for the man convicted of killing an 11-year-old Chicago boy and stabbing his pregnant mother. In June, a jury found Crosetti Brand, 39, guilty after was charged with 17 counts, including first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, armed robbery, home invasion and domestic battery. Prosecutors said Brand attacked his ex-girlfriend, Laterria Smith, 33, and her son, Jayden Perkins, just one day after being released from jail in March of 2024. Smith is now suing the government agencies that released Brand from jail. Smith was critically wounded but survived. This is a developing story. CBS News Chicago will continue to provide updates.
CBS News
14-07-2025
- CBS News
Children Harmed
On their shared birthday, Jayden Perkins and Kameron Miles would each have candle-lit cupcakes while friends and family would sing to them. Born six years apart on May 28th, the brothers were bonded by more than just a date. Jayden, the older brother, would trick-or-treat with Kameron on Halloween, and taught him how to spell his name. For Kameron, Jayden was his hero. But that tradition of shared candles and shared memories came to a horrific end last year, when Jayden, just 11 years old, was stabbed to death inside their home — killed while trying to protect their mother, Laterria Smith, from a violent ex-boyfriend. Five-year-old Kameron witnessed the entire attack. Click here to read the full story.
CBS News
01-07-2025
- CBS News
Jayden Perkins murder exposes how the system leaves domestic violence victims, families vulnerable
Laterria Smith speaks out about court system failures that led to her son's murder Laterria Smith speaks out about court system failures that led to her son's murder Laterria Smith speaks out about court system failures that led to her son's murder The murder of 11-year-old Jayden Perkins has become an example of how domestic violence victims and their families are left vulnerable by the justice system. Perkins was killed outside his home in Edgewater when he tried to defend his pregnant mother, Laterria Smith, as she was attacked by her ex-boyfriend Crosetti Brand. Smith was stabbed 15 times that day, though she and her baby survived. Perkins was killed. "He, he stabbed my son. My son hit the floor," Smith recalled with some difficulty. "My son is a true hero." An investigation by CBS News Chicago found the system left Brand free to attack, and Smith in danger. "I feel like I took the necessary steps to, to be protected, me and my family, to be protected. But we weren't," Smith said. Smith filed a petition for an order of protection against Brand. She told the court that Brand "sent me several text messages saying he would kill me and my family." Despite that, the judge denied the emergency help, only giving her a future hearing date. "At that point I was scared, because I'm like, this is a life or death situation and I'm pleading, begging for help and you deny it?" she recalled. She said the judge denied the order because Brand was already incarcerated, but he had only been temporarily locked up for a parole violation in a separate case involving another woman. He was released just three weeks later by the Prisoner Review Board. Brand attacked Smith and her son the day after his release, and the same day her order of protection hearing was scheduled for. "Had they looked into his background and seen the types of things he was doing to women, they would never have let him out of jail the day before we had to go to court," Smith said. The CBS News Chicago investigation fond the judge, the Department of Corrections and the Prisoner Review Board all either failed to communicate or investigate critical information before Brand's release. "I want them to acknowledge the negligence that was made," Smith said. "I just keep saying to myself, 'This can't be my life now. This can't be.' I just keep saying, 'I want to wake up from this bad dream.' But no, it's real." Soon after our investigation two Prisoner Review Board members resigned, and lawmakers pushed to have the board go through mandatory domestic violence training.
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Yahoo
Editorial: Eileen O'Neill Burke is a marvel so far as state's attorney. Her office needs more resources.
As last week ended, two events in Chicago underscored the deep challenges still facing this city when it comes to the most basic of human needs — our safety and security. Crosetti Brand on Thursday was found guilty by a jury (after just 90 minutes of deliberation) of stabbing 11-year-old Jayden Perkins to death as the boy tried to protect his mother from ex-boyfriend Brand, who was knifing her as well. Just hours later, Chicago police Officer Krystal Rivera, 36, was shot dead as she and other officers investigated a person believed to have a gun in Chatham on the city's South Side. The trauma and tragedy inherent in both stories was on our minds as we recalled our meeting earlier in the week with Cook County State's Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke. O'Neill Burke discussed her first six months on the job. She has wasted no time beginning to whip the nation's third-largest district attorney's office into shape after years of diminishment. Recruiting of new prosecutors has gone so well that the office has surpassed its salary allocation, she told us. But she told us something else during our conversation that was bracing indeed. As she was running for the office last year, O'Neill Burke said, 'I thought guns were the biggest problem. But it turns out domestic violence is.' In Cook County, 23 women have died allegedly at the hands of abusers just since O'Neill Burke took office in December. Twenty-three. Let that number sink in. Even as Laterria Smith, Jayden's mother, saw Brand face justice a little over a year after that horrific day, women aren't being adequately protected from the men in their lives who abuse them. Under O'Neill Burke, prosecutors already are making some progress on this front. The rate at which Cook County judges now are detaining those accused of domestic violence while they await trial has increased to 81% from around 50% before she took office, she told us. Part of the reason for the increase is a change in procedure. At O'Neill Burke's request, Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans granted her prosecutors rapid access to a far broader range of records on criminal defendants than had long been the case. So when assistant state's attorneys now stand before judges and request pretrial confinement, they have at their disposal records on defendants providing crucial context for judicial decisions that can mean life or death for victims. An example: Just after O'Neill Burke took office, one of her young prosecutors sought detention for a man accused of leaving gifts for his children at the doorstep of the mother, who'd obtained an order of protection against him. That by itself seemed innocuous, and thus the prosecutor (who did not have easy access to the explanatory data) was unable to explain to the judge why the office had decided to seek confinement. It turned out the father had previously abducted the children, taking them to Indiana, and they'd been traumatized, O'Neill Burke told us. But the prosecutor didn't know that while standing before the judge, who to his credit took it upon the court to look up the back story. O'Neill Burke said she's fixed that problem by improving prosecutors' access to the information they need. The change in procedure was a relatively straightforward fix, but far more needs to be done to give O'Neill Burke the tools to keep turning her office around. And for those items, funding will be needed. We were surprised to learn that the state's attorney's office has no automated case-management system to speak of. For felonies, there's a system created in-house more than a decade ago on a platform that no longer is tech-supported. Assistant state's attorneys must input into spreadsheets procedural developments in each of their many cases — something prosecutors themselves don't have the time to do and paralegals ought to be handling. Oh, except the office has no paralegals. An opinion piece we published recently took O'Neill Burke to task for removing information the office had been posting online under her predecessor, Kim Foxx, on the status of felony cases. O'Neill Burke said she did so because much of the information was incomplete, incorrect or unverifiable due to the technology deficiencies. Transparency, of course, remains important. The state's attorney's office, which has a current-year budget of $187 million, badly needs a bona fide case-management system, and that will cost millions. Money well spent, we say, because the public would have access to this important information, and the office itself could make better decisions about resource allocation and — critically — move criminal cases through the process much faster than the current woefully slow pace of prosecutions. But that's not all. If anything, we were more shocked to hear that our local prosecutor's office essentially has no internal forensics unit. Cook County is virtually the only major urban local prosecution office in the nation without one. In this day and age, DNA analysis, drug content analysis and of course fingerprint analysis are integral components of most felony cases. The office currently has a single scientist handling its forensics needs. Veteran lawyers with significant forensics-evidence experience left during the previous administration, we're told. An effective forensics team needs to be established as soon as possible. O'Neill Burke will submit her first budget request in July to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. The two have a less-than-warm relationship; Preckwinkle staunchly backed O'Neill Burke's Democratic primary opponent last year. O'Neill Burke acknowledged the friction to us, but also expressed admiration for Preckwinkle's administrative skills and professionalism. For the sake of the well-being of all Cook County residents, Preckwinkle should do her part to help O'Neill Burke modernize the office. That returns us to the tragic killing of Officer Rivera, who'd been on the Chicago police force for four years and is survived by a young daughter. Police Superintendent Larry Snelling told reporters that Rivera had processed two guns she'd removed from Chicago's streets on Thursday before yet another gun took her life that night. O'Neill Burke pledged during her campaign to seek pretrial detention for anyone caught with an assault weapon, and that includes handguns with contraptions converting them to automatic firearms. She's been true to her word. And anecdotally, she says, word is reaching the streets. There's no statistic that definitively captures the deterrent effect of believing consequences will be severe for violating gun laws, and O'Neill Burke doesn't toot her own horn like other local politicians when it comes to the current improving crime stats. But she deserves her share of the credit. Now Cook County should get her what she needs to be even more effective. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@
