Family left broken after mother allegedly killed her 4-year-old son in Logan Square during an emotional collapse: ‘I know she loved him'
'I loved her. I still do. And I know she loved them. … I know she loved him,' Wallace, 50, told the Tribune, struggling to continue the interview.
Wallace was talking about his 4-year-old son, Jordan Wallace, whom, according to prosecutors, Tolbert stabbed more than 36 times, killing him on Independence Day morning. The mother also stabbed her two older children before setting their Logan Square home on fire, according to Chicago police.
The mother attacked her children because she believed they were 'possessed by the devil,' according to Cook County prosecutors.
For Wallace, the surviving children and the rest of their family, the pain is still raw, the grief is strong and the reality difficult to comprehend. Tolbert, he said, had never been abusive toward the children despite dealing with perhaps a deteriorating mental condition.
'That was not her,' Wallace said. Though he has not spoken to Tolbert, as he arranges the funeral for his 4-year-old, he prays for her because he knows, he said, that she is not OK.
'It hurts my heart that not only is my son gone, but his mom destroyed herself in the making,' Wallace said. 'And then I got these other two children that (are) traumatized. If something or whatever they (prosecutors) do to Wendy, it is going to be another painful situation.'
Tolbert, 45, was charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, arson and other felonies in the July 4 attack that killed Jordan and injured her two other children. A Cook County judge on Sunday ordered Tolbert detained pending trial.
In a statement, the Cook County public defender's office said the case is still in the 'earliest stage of a complex and lengthy legal process.' It noted that the allegations by police and prosecutors have not yet been proven.
According to a health care order filed in court, Tolbert reported that she suffers from schizophrenia and cancer. 'This is a dream. This is not real,' she said as she held her hands over her ears and sobbed during the hearing, according to a Sun-Times report.
Now both in stable condition, the 10-year-old boy and 13-year-old girl are left to face the heaviness of the aftermath of the attack and a trial against their mother as they try to comprehend the sudden attack.
Tolbert's 10-year-old son was on a couch playing video games while his 4-year-old brother was asleep next to him at their home in the 3600 block of West Palmer Street in the Logan Square neighborhood, according to prosecutors. Their 13-year-old sister was in her bedroom.
The children were alone with their mother. The two boys are Wallace's biological children. And though Wallace helped to raise the 13-year-old girl until the couple's recent divorce, she is now under her biological father's care.
The mother suddenly approached the children coming out of the kitchen and stabbed the 10-year-old in his arm as he tried to push her off, prosecutors said. The boy then got up and ran to the basement. His little brother, who had woken up, tried to follow him.
Tolbert then kicked the younger boy, causing him to fall down the stairs, prosecutors alleged. She then stabbed Jordan 36 times in the face, chest and back, according to the charges. Meanwhile, the 10-year-old then ran into his room and spoke with his sister, who was in a different room, through the wall, hatching a plan to escape.
The girl called 911, prosecutors said, and reported that 'her mother was trying to kill her.'
As their mother banged on her bedroom door, prosecutors said, the two older children made a plan to open their doors at the same time and fight back. Tolbert then stabbed the girl multiple times, leaving her severely wounded, according to Wallace.
'My son said it came as a complete surprise. Her face was not the same. He couldn't comprehend what was coming out of her mouth calling them devils,' Wallace said, recounting what he said his son, now under his care, shared with him.
Chicago police officers arrived at the apartment around 9:20 a.m., according to prosecutors, and heard the 10-year-old call out from a window. Tolbert stepped outside carrying the knife as well as a paper towel that was on fire, according to prosecutors.
Smoke then started coming from the apartment as police arrested Tolbert. Within minutes, the building was engulfed in flames. Officers had to break several windows to get into the apartment, where they found Jordan and the girl unresponsive.
All three kids were taken to Stroger Hospital, where Jordan was pronounced dead.
Upon arriving at the hospital, Wallace asked to see his children. He was devastated, he said, after seeing Jordan's body lifeless and deeply wounded.
Tolbert admitted to officers that she attacked her children because she believed they were possessed by the devil, prosecutors said.
'I couldn't believe it,' Wallace said. He was crying hysterically, but amid the chaos, he had to find strength and serenity because his other two children needed him, he recalled.
When he was finally able to hug his 10-year-old boy, there was some brief relief. 'At least I have him and he has me, but we have a long way to go to move forward,' he said.
Although Wallace no longer lived with the children and their mother, he visited the children regularly. His two biological boys with Tolbert were his inspiration to progress his life after a tumultuous youth and relationship with Tolbert.
Though they had a rocky ending, Wallace loved Tolbert, he said. The couple were married in 2017 but had been together several years before that. In June of this year, they finalized their divorce.
'I married Wendy because I love Wendy, and Wendy was the nicest woman I ever had. She was so caring,' Wallace said.
Tolbert, he said, was a caring and loving mother. Sometimes, even overprotective, where she wouldn't let their children sleep over at friends' or family's homes. Like any other mother, she would scold or yell at the children from time to time, but nothing ever beyond that, Wallace said.
'Wendy is loved. Wendy is loved outside of this situation,' Wallace added.
In the many years that Wallace spent by her side, Tolbert showed no signs of a troubled mental state. However, he recalls the arguments, anger and frustration in their relationship that could have been a sign of an unstable mental state. Still, nothing could have predicted such a serious mental illness that could have caused the tragedy.
'I just wish it was something that we can try to fix, her brain, you know. But maybe she can't, you know, I don't know. I just know that the system is not forgiving of this type of situation,' Wallace said.
Wallace said the two had made a plan to co-parent though he had agreed to give her full custody until he felt more comfortable sharing. Tolbert agreed, he said.
'Never did or could I have ever imagined them being in any danger, let alone this type of danger,' he said.
Jordan was Wallace's youngest son. A portrait of the little boy smirking with his hands crossed and wearing short braids was his Facebook profile even before the tragedy. It reflects the boy's attitude, Wallace said — one that he will never experience again.
After the divorce, losing a job and now living with his parents, Wallace found motivation from his sons to start over, he said.
Jordan was a happy boy. He loved to race with his father, mimicking how fast Hot Wheels cars would go. 'He was fast,' Wallace recalled with a smile. 'He would say he couldn't wait to get bigger.'
But Wallace could. He wanted to have more time with his baby to give him everything he couldn't give his older sons, who perhaps got a different version of him, he said.
Jordan was so special, caring and smart, 'to the point where I felt like he was reincarnated from somewhere,' Wallace said. The boy could often sense when someone raised their voice and asked them nicely to quiet down, or he would urge them to stop arguing and calm down.
'If my head was down, he'll come and pick my head up and want to look at my eyes, you know, because he was concerned about me,' Wallace said. 'He was so loving that he taught me how to love. And because of him, you know, I feel like I'm gonna be a better man because he was a blessing.'
His little Jordan, Wallace said, was special. 'I just didn't know he was so special that he would only get to be here for four years,' he said.
As Wallace arranges the funeral for his boy, he is also looking for a home and a way to handle medical expenses. The fire destroyed everything inside their home. The support from family, friends and community has given Wallace and their family strength, he said.
A family friend set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for the burial services and other expenses.
Despite all the pain and frustration, Wallace hopes that one day, 'we can try to be more compassionate about mental health issues and be more aware about the signs and symbols of this.'
It could have saved his son's life.
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Chicago Tribune
a day ago
- Chicago Tribune
‘Dehumanizing': Inside the Broadview ICE facility where immigrants sleep on cold concrete
The sounds of weeping mothers curled on cold concrete floors echoed through the walls at the federal immigration processing center in Broadview, keeping Gladis Chavez awake for most of the night. The cries came in waves, she recalled. Quiet whimpers, choked gasps and occasional prayers. About children left behind and fears of what would happen next. Most of the women who had been detained at a routine check-in June 4 at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Chicago now had nothing but each other and a few jackets they shared to fight off the nightly chill that seeped into their bones in a nondescript brick building just off the Eisenhower Expressway. By day three, Chavez said, her body ached with exhaustion. On day four, she and some of the other women were finally transferred out. The west suburban processing center is designed to hold people for no more than 12 hours before transferring them to a formal immigration detention facility. It has no beds, let alone any covers, Chavez said. They were not offered showers or hot food. No toothbrushes or feminine products. And certainly, Chavez recalled, those detained had no answers from immigration authorities about what would happen next. An investigation by the Chicago Tribune found that immigration detainees such as Chavez have been held for days at the processing center, a two-story building that is designed as a temporary way station until detainees can be transferred to jails out of state. For busier periods in June, data shows the typical detainee was held two or three days — far longer than the five or so hours typical in years past. The findings, which come from a Tribune analysis of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data obtained and shared by the research group Deportation Data Project, show that the federal agency has routinely violated ICE's internal guidelines, which say the facility shouldn't hold people for more than 12 hours. Chavez became one of hundreds of people held in the facility for longer than 12 hours under the latest crackdown. Data showed that at least three people spent six or more days there. 'There were nearly 30 other women there in a single big room. Most were mothers who couldn't stop crying. The group of men were in a separate room,' Chavez said in Spanish, speaking to the Tribune in a Zoom interview from Honduras. In the group, she said, she met women who were nursing, pregnant women and elderly women. 'I never want any of my children, or any other person to go through this. It's dehumanizing, they treat us worse than criminals,' Chavez said. ICE, for its part, declined to respond to questions about the Tribune's findings and has not released its own data calculating how often it has held people in Broadview. But on the agency's website, it says it employs 'a robust, multilevel oversight and compliance program' to ensure each facility follows a 'strict set of detention standards.' A spokesperson for ICE reportedly told ABC 7 that: 'Any accusations that detainees are treated inhumanely in any way are categorically false. … There are occasions where detainees might need to stay at the Broadview office longer than the anticipated administrative processing time. While these instances are a rarity, detainees in such situations are given ample food, regular access to phones, showers and legal representation as well as medical care when needed.' Few can get inside to see what's going on, frustrating immigrant rights advocates and their allies in Congress. In mid-June, as the facility was cycling through detainees such as Chavez, four Democratic members of Congress were denied entry into the Broadview facility during an unannounced visit. On Wednesday, a dozen Democratic members of Congress who have been blocked from making oversight visits at immigration detention centers filed a federal lawsuit against President Donald Trump's administration that seeks to ensure they are granted entry into the facilities, including Broadview, even without prior notice. In Illinois, immigrant rights advocates are urging Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul to investigate the Broadview facility's ownership structure and contractual agreements with federal immigration authorities. They're also calling for a full site inspection and for the state to use all available legal tools to shut the facility down. State and local officials, however, say there's little they can do to force the U.S. government to change how it operates a federal facility. The longer detention times in Broadview have come as the Trump administration has pushed a massive boost in arrests while scrambling to build out the infrastructure to handle them, creating logistical logjams that can be particularly felt in Illinois, which has forbid local jails from holding ICE detainees. That means anyone arrested in the Chicago area must be sent out of state, once they're processed by ICE. So, for now, that can mean a small processing facility in the western suburbs — one that rarely held anyone overnight during the final years of President Joe Biden's administration — can end up warehousing dozens of detainees as they await ICE to move them. State Sen. Omar Aquino, a Chicago Democrat, was the primary sponsor of the Illinois Way Forward Act, which also limited local jails from contracting with ICE. He did not respond to questions regarding the unintentional hardships detainees are now facing because of the law. Instead, he said he 'stand(s) by the progress we have made in solidifying Illinois as a welcoming state, where immigrant families can live without fear and raise their children in a safe and supportive environment.' Chavez, who had been an immigration advocate in Chicago for nearly a decade, was deported on July 13 back to her native Honduras after spending more than a month in different ICE facilities in Illinois and Kentucky. She said she still feels traumatized by a system that separated her from her children and grandchildren while causing emotional and physical pain. Her ankles are still swollen from being shackled as she moved from one facility to another flown back to Honduras. 'I'm trying to heal both emotionally and physically,' she said. In 2023, the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE, described the Broadview facility as a '12-hour hold facility with the typical stay of approximately five hours,' with a DHS auditor noting that 'absent exceptional circumstances, no detainee should be housed in a holding facility for longer than 12 hours.' When the members of Congress attempted to visit the site in June, Rep. Delia Ramirez noted, in a speech on the House floor, that ICE had posted a sign saying that the agency only 'processes' arrestees there and 'does not house aliens at these locations.' Yet, ICE's own data would suggest otherwise. The Tribune examined an ICE dataset, provided through the Deportation Data Project, that recorded dates and times of everyone detained at an ICE facility across the country, from September 2023 through June 26. The data had limitations. ICE recorded a time, down to the minute, when each person was checked in and out, but the Tribune found that the logs sometimes recorded people leaving Broadview only a minute or two before entering another facility hundreds of miles away, suggesting ICE may not have properly logged when someone left. To adjust for that, the Tribune computed earlier times people may have left Broadview, based on reasonable travel times from Broadview to the next ICE facilities — calculated through online mapping software and more plausible entries by ICE for others sent the same places. Even adjusting down the length of potential stays in Broadview, the analysis found a clear jump in how long detainees were held there, particularly earlier this summer. The median time logged for someone — meaning that half had shorter stays and half had longer — jumped beyond 12 hours for people booked into Broadview by mid-June. The median time continued rising as the month continued, eclipsing 24 hours for the typical detainee before they left Broadview, and then two days and sometimes three days. Even when the figures were averaged out over seven days — to smooth out any abnormally busy or slow days — the median stay in Broadview approached 48 hours for detainees, or four times as long as the 12-hour ICE guideline. While the ICE data doesn't name those detained, Chavez's biographical data and description of her journey through ICE facilities matched what was logged for one person. The log describes a Honduran woman as a widow, born the same year as her, with no criminal record but a deportation order issued in January, who was booked into the Broadview facility the morning of June 4 and not transferred out until more than three days later. The Tribune analysis found that ICE booked more arrestees on June 4 — 88 — than any on other day covered by the data. They joined another 23 who had been shipped that day to Broadview from facilities in Wisconsin and Indiana that house ICE detainees, as ICE shuffled detainees across the country. That made it the busiest day for bookings in Broadview through late June, as ICE ramped up enforcement in the Chicago area, and fueled the long stays in a place where advocates and family members of the detained say people have been held without basic necessities or medical care. In the federal government's 2023 audit of the facility, it confirmed the facility has six holding cells — two large ones, two smaller ones and two single-occupancy — with the four largest cells each having a toilet for detainees to share, as well as 'a place to sit while awaiting processing.' The audit said the facility lacked a medical unit, medical staff, food facilities or food staff. 'While the two large holding rooms are equipped with a single shower; these showers are inoperable, and the space is currently used for storage,' the 2023 audit noted. Marina Lopez Perez also was detained on June 4 after she showed up to a check-in with ICE in its South Loop facility. The Guatemala native spent three days in Broadview before she was taken to Grayson Country Detention Center in Kentucky, where she awaits her release or deportation. She left behind three children, two of them U.S. citizens, and a husband. She calls when she can, said her husband, who asked that his name be withheld, fearing ICE retaliation. Though he first tried to shield their two younger kids from the truth, telling them that their mother was at work, time, fear and reality that she may be deported, caught up to him. Now the children know, though they don't fully understand, that their mother is in jail. 'There are times when I hear her crying through the phone,' Lopez's husband said. 'I know it is not easy to be in there.' Their older son, a 13-year-old, whose name the Tribune is withholding at the family's request, said he worries constantly about his mother, especially after learning about the complaints of conditions at facilities such as Broadview. 'There are nights when I can't sleep thinking about my mom,' the teen said. 'I wonder if she's sleeping, or if she even got to eat.' Immigrant rights advocates complain that such conditions not only violate detainees' human rights, but also ICE's own policies. 'It's overflowed. They're not able to take people out within the times they are supposed to,' said Brandon Lee, with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. In July, advocates outlined their concerns about the Broadview facility's violations of state law in a letter to Raoul and Cook County State's Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke, asking for their support. But both elected officials said that they do not possess direct investigating authority over ICE. Raoul added that only Congress could step in, while noting that reports of conditions at Broadview, 'while disturbing, are consistent with the deplorable conditions we have seen at federal ICE facilities around the nation.' Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, agreed that state law cannot force changes at federally operated facilities like Broadview. He said the group is pushing Congress for more oversight of ICE operations, which the Republican-controlled body infused with a significant boost in cash to ramp up immigration enforcement, including building new detention centers. Some advocates want Broadview shut down altogether. 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Just because something isn't named a detention facility doesn't mean this administration isn't going to use it as one,' she said at the time. 'If people are detained there, it is a detention facility, period.' For now, the families of detained loved ones endure — whether it is Chavez back in Honduras, thousands of miles away from her three children, or Lopez, who is only a couple of hundred of miles away from her three children, but still unable to see them. Even if Lopez's husband wanted to take the children to see their mother in detention, the trip would be too difficult, he said. The family lives in north suburban Lake County and Lopez is in Kentucky. Chavez said she is still trying to comprehend how she ended up detained, sleeping on the cold floor in Broadview, shackled and deprived of basic necessities. 'We prayed. Sometimes we braided each other's hair. We cried,' recalling her detention in Broadview and Kentucky, Chavez said. Her lawyer said they will continue to appeal her asylum case from Honduras.
Chicago Tribune
2 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
Today in Chicago History: ‘Black Sox' acquitted, but ultimately banned for life from baseball
Here's a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Aug. 2, according to the Tribune's archives. Is an important event missing from this date? Email us. Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago) 1921: Eight White Sox players had been charged with throwing the World Series. Despite earning the nickname the 'Black Sox,' the men were acquitted by a jury that deliberated just 2 hours and 47 minutes. Chicago White Sox players conspired to throw the 1919 World Series. Here's how the Tribune covered it.A day after their acquittal, however, baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis ruled that the players allegedly involved — Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Oscar Emil 'Happy' Felsch, Chick Gandil, Frederick William McMullin, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver and Lefty Williams — would be banned for life from organized baseball. 1990: Chicago White Sox rookie Frank Thomas knocked in the winning run in his first major-league game. The Sox beat the Milwaukee Brewers 4-3 during the opener of a doubleheader at County Stadium. In addition to future Hall of Famer Thomas, the Sox's lineup also included two of their No. 1 draft picks: Alex Fernandez (1990) and Robin Ventura (1988). 2001: Chicago Public Library launched its 'One Book, One Chicago' initiative. The first book on the list: 'To Kill a Mockingbird' by Harper Lee — Mayor Richard M. Daley's favorite. Vintage Chicago Tribune: Pelé, Hamm, Beckham, Rapinoe, Messi and more. When soccer's big names came to play2009: Brazilian soccer star Marta made her professional debut in the United States with her Los Angeles Sol team, which lost in a match against the Chicago Red Stars at Toyota Park in Bridgeview. Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past.
New York Post
3 days ago
- New York Post
Trump admin fires back at claims Clinton plan to ‘smear' prez with Russia ties was disinfo: ‘No one is buying your bulls–t anymore'
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