A woman accused of fatally stabbing a 7-year-old girl on the South Side on Saturday morning has been charged.
Chicago police said Shavon Gayden, 48, of Chicago, was charged with one felony count of first-degree murder.
Police said minutes before her arrest, she allegedly stabbed and killed the young girl in the 8600 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue in the East Chatham neighborhood just before noon.
According to police, the girl, identified by loved ones as Eddimar Hernandez Chacon, was walking when she was approached by a woman, who pulled out a sharp object and stabbed the young girl multiple times in the back.
She was taken to the University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Police said bystanders who witnessed the stabbing detained the woman. They said she was injured while being detained and was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries and is in police custody.
The charge comes just hours after Eddimar's family held a balloon release and vigil for her.
"The tears of the family are intermingling with the dry blood of a seven-year-old," said Pastor Donovan Price. "We've lost a bit of our future and we need every bit of our future."
The attack was unprovoked and unexpected.
CBS News Chicago learned that Gayden had been charged in at least four criminal cases in Cook County since 2016, including a 2023 attack on a CTA bus operator. Two cases were dropped and in two of the convictions she received probation, including the time the state processed and sentenced her for a battery case while she was on an active arrest warrant, but did not appear to take her back into custody.
"I'm not sure why they continue to give her a slap on the wrist and let her out," said Kina Wallace.
Wallace says she's known Gayden for decades because the suspect was in a relationship with Wallace's family member and had children with him before her mental health issues appeared.
She says they have tried repeatedly to have Gayden treated for severe mental health and substance abuse issues and Wallace's family members were often the target of Gayden's violence and threats.
"She, you know, tried several attempts to set the house on fire where she was living some years ago and her children, as well as her grandchildren, were in that house," she said.
Wallace says she feels the system failed the families on all sides of this tragedy — though one is forever robbed of a future together.
"Myself and even on behalf of my family, we are so sorry. So sorry that this happened to your loved one, because I believe that this could have been prevented. I do and it's unacceptable. It's unacceptable," Wallace said.
Gayden is scheduled to appear at a detention hearing on Monday. It is unclear if she will physically appear.
