A woman accused of stabbing 3-year-old Julian Wood to death in a Cleveland, Ohio, store parking lot this summer has been found incompetent to stand trial.
The suspect, Bionca Ellis, 32, will also be sent to an inpatient treatment facility, News 5 Cleveland reported. ReportedCiting court records.
Ellis was undergoing 20 days of testing, but the doctor said: “The defendant is not competent to stand trial, but there is a reasonable likelihood that he will regain competency within the statutory time frame if a course of treatment is provided,” according to Cuyahoga County District Court records.
Ellis will be remanded to the custody of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office after completing treatment at Northcoast Behavioral Health Center, according to the report, which noted that the statutory deadline for determining whether she is competent for future trial is one year.
The order came after Ellis' lawyers said at a July hearing that Ellis had “failed to cooperate in her defense.”
Cleveland State University law professor Jonathan Witmer Rich told the outlet that there would be updates on Ellis's progress in the coming days, and that if Ellis is deemed unfit to stand trial after treatment, he could remain in a psychiatric facility as a safety precaution, according to the report.
“If the judge ultimately determines that the defendant is a danger to themselves or others, they may be involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital in that institution, and of course they will be trying to provide treatment,” Witmer Rich said.
Ellis is charged with seven offences, including murder and assault, and the report said his incapacity “does not affect the charges, but rather relates to his current mental state, not his mental state at the time of the offences.”
“So assuming that at some point the defendant is competent to stand trial, at that trial the defendant may seek to present evidence that at the time of the crime, he or she suffered from a severe mental illness, and because of that severe mental illness, the defendant did not understand the wrongfulness of his or her conduct,” Witmer Rich said.
The report said Ellis could technically plead not guilty by reason of insanity, but could still be required to remain in a psychiatric hospital if she is deemed a threat to society.
Ellis is accused of stealing a knife from a Cleveland thrift store, then walking to the Giant Eagle grocery store next door and stabbing 38-year-old Margot Wood and her son, Julian, in the parking lot on June 3.
Margot suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the sudden attack, but her young child died after being taken to St. John's Medical Center.
Appearing in Cuyahoga County Court on a murder charge in Julian's death, Ellis smiled and grinned as Judge Nancy Margaret Russo spoke.
Ellis refused to answer questions, causing the arraignment hearing to be extended three times and last nearly an hour, Cleveland.com reported. Reported.
Judge Russo increased Ellis' bail from $1 million to $5 million following emotional testimony from Julianne's father, Jared Wood.
“Nothing can ever replace my son or what my wife and I and our other children are going through. It's so awful,” Jared said, as Ellis looked the other way. “Please do everything you can to keep this monster behind bars.”
Prosecutors have announced they will seek the death penalty on the charges against Ellis. Daily Mail.
Ellis had previous interactions with police prior to stabbing the toddler to death.
An Ohio judge released Ellis just days before the deadly attack, finding there were no “red flags” despite his extensive criminal history. Ellis had been arrested on probation on May 29. for a violation related to an alleged shoplifting incident at Walmart last year. Daily Mail Reported.
According to Fox 8, while Ellis was being held in Rocky River Municipal Court on a probation violation, a magistrate judge ordered Ellis held for a mental status evaluation after he appeared unresponsive. Reported.
Nevertheless, Judge Brian Hagan reintegrated Ellis back into society on May 31.
Hagan has refused to acknowledge that he may have been wrong in releasing her after she allegedly violently killed the 3-year-old.
“What would you do differently when you handle this case or the next one?” a Fox 8 reporter asked him.
“Nothing. I'm confident in the way this court handled this case,” the judge replied. “We did it according to the letter of the law. There was nothing there that would have set off any alarm bells.”
“There were no red flags on that pillar. There were no signs. There were no signs of mental distress, no signs of past violent behaviour,” Hagan argued.
Despite the judge claiming that Ellis showed no signs of “mental distress”, it was later revealed that the mentally ill woman had a long criminal history and had even told police that she had killed people.
Court records obtained by Fox 8 show Ellis had an arrest warrant issued in February in Kern County, California, for three counts of “assault on a person.”
After evading arrest on those charges, Ellis was placed in a women's shelter in Ohio, where authorities contacted Cleveland police a few weeks later and reportedly confessed to killing the woman in California.
“Bionca then explained that he had killed someone in Bakersfield, California within the past few months,” the police report, seen by the outlet, reads. “He described the victim as a white female, approximately 5'6″, weighing 150 pounds, and either a bartender or working in a bar.”
Ellis reportedly told police he abandoned the victim's body in an unknown location, possibly near a river.
Bakersfield police had several unsolved murder cases “similar” to the one Ellis described, but Ellis had not been named as a suspect in any of them, Fox 8 reported.
The Cleveland police report also said Ellis said he “was going to kill somebody at the shelter” if he wasn't taken to jail, and that he “wanted to kill somebody and eat their flesh.”
Bakersfield police reportedly declined to arrest Ellis for murder due to insufficient evidence, and did not take him in on an arrest warrant for the assault charge.
“Cleveland police also contacted North Olmsted police about the probation violation warrant,” the outlet reported, “but North Olmsted police said they would not be taking her into custody.”
Instead of arresting Ellis, North Olmsted police reportedly recommended simply “informing” her that she had an active arrest warrant.
Cleveland police then transported Ellis to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, where he “became extremely agitated and agitated and began fighting with medical staff and officers,” the report said.
She was eventually sedated for safety reasons, according to the police report.
It's unclear how long she remained in the Ohio hospital, but according to Osceola County Sheriff's Office records viewed by Fox 8, Ellis was arrested just a few weeks later near Orlando, Florida, on a trespassing charge after refusing to leave the hotel.
“She was eventually released from prison and returned to Ohio,” the outlet reported.
Ellis' mother, Yolanda Eggleton, said She said the courts and the mental health system have failed her daughter and the Wood family, Fox 8 reported.
“My condolences go out to this family,” Eggleton said. “I was devastated when I found out about this. I'm still devastated. A child should never lose their life. She was around my grandchildren. One of my grandchildren could have died.”
Her mother said her daughter had suffered from mental health problems for many years and had recently stopped taking medication.
Mr Eggleton argued his daughter should have been detained for a psychiatric evaluation when Judge Gregory Sponsler requested it at the end of May, adding that he believed Ms Ellis was “hallucinating”.
“Bionca had been on a number of medications but nothing worked. She was suffering from visual and auditory hallucinations,” Eggleton said.
Olivia Rondeau contributed to this report.
