Bail Denied for Grandma Who Used Pipe Wrench, Sock and Power Saw to Kill 7-Month-Old Baby: Police

A baby, just 7 months old, was killed Monday because she wouldn’t stop crying, according to Chicago Police. Her grandmother beat her with an 18-inch pipe wrench and stuffed a sock into her mouth, then took a circular power saw to the baby’s throat, police and prosecutors said.

The grandmother, 52-year-old Manuela Rodriguez, was taken into custody and was treated at Mt. Sinai Hospital after attempting to take her own life with the saw, cutting herself across her own throat. Large, stitched gashes can be seen in her booking photo. A police source told the Chicago Sun-Times the grandmother was taking antidepressant medication. She’s now charged with first-degree murder.

On Wednesday, a Cook County judge denied bail. Rodriguez will be taken to Cermak Hospital at the jail for observation.

The baby girl’s name is Rose Herrera. Family called her Rosie. Autopsy shows the baby was already dead of from the pipe-wrench beating and asphyxiation when the grandmother cut her with the saw, according to the Cook County medical examiner.

A neighbor said Rodriguez was a doting grandmother and was friendly with neighbors.

“She would help everybody and if you needed a glass of milk or something she would give it to you,” said Maria Gentil, who said she’s known Rodriguez for several years. “When my mother died, she went up and down the street asking for money for her funeral.”

Police were called to the house in the Little Village neighborhood in the 2800 block of South Avers just before 10 a.m. and found the dead baby and the wounded grandmother. Two adult women, each with a child, live in the house with an older couple, according to neighbors.

“The daughter with the baby just graduated from college to be a teacher,” a family friend told ABC 7 News. “They’re good people.”

The baby’s father, who’s 23, works at a grain elevator in Beecher, the town where he grew up. He received a call from police Monday morning. A co-worker, Ben Llamas, drove the father to the house where the baby’s life was taken because the father was too distraught to drive, he told the Chicago Tribune.

“We just drove in silence. He was in shock,” Llamas said.

Llamas said his friend was a proud father.

“At first, he was reluctant, but when the baby came, he fell in love,” Llamas told the Sun-Times. “He shows us pictures of that baby every day.”

The neighborhood gathered in shock and grief Monday afternoon after the grandmother was taken away.

“When I came out I heard a young lady in front of the door, and she was crying, ‘When am I going to see my mom?’ or something like that. And I think they told her to go inside because she was in shock,” Virginia Otero, a neighbor, told ABC 7.

Another neighbor told the Tribune she had seen little Rose Herrera at a clinic recently. She suffered a bout of the flu.

“She wanted to be hugged, she was a happy baby,” the woman said. “She was very pretty.”

By all accounts, the family seemed to be a happy, decent and friendly one, according to neighbors. The Department of Children and Family Services reports the agency has had no contact with the family, but DCFS is now investigating further.

“They were really good people,” Francisco Arreola told the Tribune, speaking in Spanish. “I would always see them and they were very happy. I never heard them fight or anything.

“They were very good people.”

INFANT SLAIN BY GRANDMA IN 2013: In October 2013, the Chicago area was shocked by another baby killing at the hands of a grandma. Alfreda Giedrojc of Oak Lawn, 61 at the time, killed her 6-month-old granddaughter with a butcher knife and sledgehammer while the child’s father was at work. Giedrojc was later ruled mentally unfit to stand trial. » read Patch coverage of the Giedrojc case

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