Jury Convicts Man In 2021 Murders Of Wheeling Mom, Daughter

COOK COUNTY, IL — A jury has convicted Ahmeel Fowler, the 31-year-old Pingree Grove man charged in the 2021 murders of a Wheeling mother and her 1-year-old daughter.

According to the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, Fowler was found guilty on three counts of first-degree murder and one count of aggravated kidnapping. He remains in the Cook County Jail following last week's verdict at the Circuit Court of Cook County in Rolling Meadows. His next court date is set for April 20.

ABC7 Chicago is reporting the jury deliberated for less than two hours before delivering their verdict.

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Ja'Nya Murphy, 21, who Wheeling police said an on-and-off relationship with Fowler, was found strangled to death in the Wheeling apartment she shared with her daughter, Jaclyn "Angel" Dobbs, on Nov. 9, 2021. Two days later, the body of the 1-year-old, who Fowler had kidnapped, was found in a pond in northwest Indiana, near Hammond.

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Prosecutors said Fowler left Murphy's apartment at 2:40 am., and his vehicle was seen on video an hour later at the retention pond where the baby's body had been discovered, according to ABC7. Fowler then went to his parents' home before taking off for Springfield, Missouri, where he was arrested later in the month on Nov. 23, 2021.

A GoFundMe was set up at the time for Murphy's family at the time of her death, raising over $22,000 by the time the campaign ended. She was a 2018 graduate of Adlai Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire.