Dismembered Remains Of Child Found In Chicago Lagoon

The dismembered remains of a young child have reportedly been discovered in a Chicago lagoon. Now authorities are scouring the area for more body parts while seeking to identify the child. HLN reports that the head, two hands, and two feet of the young boy were found earlier this week, prompting authorities to begin draining the lagoon.

Authorities in Chicago have enlisted the help of a sketch artist to aid in identifying the child, who appears to be a young African-American boy. No parents have come forward over the course of the investigation, which is a troubling detail in this already disturbing case.

The Chicago Tribune reports that approximately 100 officials are working this investigation, which include police officers, detectives, and divers that are combing the lagoon where the gruesome discovery took place. Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesperson for the Chicago Police, shared the collective disgust and shock being expressed over this horrific case.

“To hack up a kid like this, it’s just unimaginable. There’s somebody out there that knows what happened to this child.”

The dismembered remains were so badly decomposed at the time of discovery that authorities aren’t 100 percent sure of the nationality or even the gender of the victim. While authorities believe the victim to be a young African-American male, they cannot rule out the possibility that the child is of mixed-race or a female. An anthropologist is currently assisting to help pinpoint the finer details. Meanwhile, authorities are cross-referencing DNA taken from the child while doing a search for dental records. So far, the efforts to identify the little one have been unsuccessful.

According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, there are only around eight unsolved cases of missing children in Cook County, Illinois. The most recent of those eight cases being in 2008 — the disappearance of 1-year-old Fabricio Barajas. Meanwhile, the entire state of Illinois only has around 11 unsolved cases of missing children. In 2013, an African-American female child by the name of Ssamalia Kwatia vanished from Lake Bluff. She was 4-years-old. Ssamalia vanished with her mother, who is accused of felony kidnapping. Neither of these missing persons have been found since 2013.

It should be noted that Ssamalia doesn’t appear to have pierced ears in any of her photos, and her hair is cropped short. The dismembered remains found in the Chicago lagoon this past week were of a young child with short cropped hair and no ear piercings. These details have been used by authorities to express their uncertainty of the child’s gender.

Hopefully, someone comes forward to help identify this slain child before the young victim goes down as another cold case in the state of Illinois.

[Photo: Chicago Police Department sketch]