An 18-year-old man has been charged with killing his girlfriend over the weekend at his family’s North Lawndale home after Cook County prosecutors said “she went to his bedroom and she never left alive.”
Chiyenne Washington, 17, was found unresponsive Saturday when Chicago Fire Department paramedics responded to a call for service in the 1200 block of South Washtenaw Avenue, prosecutors said at Michael Cunningham’s detention hearing Tuesday.
She was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.
Washington had gone to Cunningham’s home late Friday, and she was not seen by Cunningham’s parents on Saturday morning before they both left the house, prosecutors said.
Cunningham initially told investigators that he had had trouble reviving Washington on Friday night and he suspected she had been using drugs, prosecutors said.
He told them that he put her in the shower to try and wake her up on Saturday morning before calling her brother about 1 p.m., who then called 911, prosecutors said.
When paramedics arrived, they found her body had been dressed and was seated on a couch with her head tilted to the side, prosecutors said.
Washington’s death was later ruled a homicide by the medical examiner’s office and her cause of death was listed as asphyxia and assault.
Prosecutors said bed sheets from his room that appeared to have blood on them were recovered, but test results were still pending Tuesday.
A defense attorney said Cunningham, who has no criminal background, had attempted CPR on Washington and asked that he be placed on electronic monitoring at his parents home.
Judge William Fahy called electronic monitoring “woefully inadequate” and said he would not “send the defendant back to the crime scene.”
The judge ordered Cunningham held at Cook County Jail while the case is pending. His next court date was set for April 2.
As the hearing ended, members of a group of people who attended the hearing for Washington began yelling at members of Cunningham’s family, who were also in attendance at the hearing.
Sheriff’s deputies had to step in and remove the group from the courtroom and later escorted them from the building.
A spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office said no one from the group was taken into custody and no charges were pending.
