Convicted Of Killing His Baby Boy, Minooka Man Now At DOC

MINOOKA, IL — After spending more than three years in the Grundy County Jail, a young man from Minooka is now at the Illinois Department of Corrections serving his prison sentence for killing his three-week-old son, Thomas James Leon Cingle.

Department of Corrections records indicate that 21-year-old Nicholas Fecarota is now serving his sentence at the Robinson Correctional Center in east central Illinois. Grundy County court records list the conviction as being involuntary manslaughter of a family member.

Fecarota has a projected parole date of Aug. 22, 2023 and a projected discharge date of Aug. 24, 2024. Fecarota received credit for the three-plus years of time he already served awaiting his trial date.

In September, a Morris radio station reported that Fecarota was sentenced to 10 years in prison and his first-degree murder charges were dropped as part of a plea bargain worked out by the Grundy County State's Attorney's Office of Jason Helland.

Under the terms of his 10-year sentence, Fecarota is required to serve half of his involuntary manslaughter sentence, WCSJ reported at the time.

The plea bargain came after Grundy County Judge Lance Peterson determined that Fecarota's August 2018 confession to Minooka police was inadmissible for trial because then-18-year-old Fecarota's IQ was on the level of a fourth-grader, and the Miranda warnings were on the level of a ninth grader, according to WCSJ.

In August 2018, Patch reported that the 18-year-old dad was accused of killing his infant boy, and Minooka Police Chief Justin Meyer told Patch at the time that Fecarota confessed to throwing his 3-week-old baby multiple times after the baby would not stop crying.

The incident happened at a Minooka apartment in the 100 block of Aux Sable Drive where Fecarota lived, Meyer said. Officers were sent to the apartment around 12:30 p.m. for a baby who was not breathing. The baby was rushed by ambulance to the Morris Hospital and died about an hour later.