Baby of Stacey Jones — who was pregnant when she was fatally shot last week — has died, officials say

CHICAGO — The child whom Stacey Jones had been carrying when she was fatally shot last week died Saturday, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

“Baby boy Harrison,” for whom the given address was the same as Jones’, in the 2100 block of East 95th Place in the Far South Side Jeffery Manor neighborhood, died at 1:51 p.m. Saturday at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

He was 4 days old.

“We can confirm this child was indeed the child related to that tragic shooting incident,” Officer Michael Carroll, a Chicago police spokesman, said by email Sunday morning.

Jones, 35, was fatally shot Tuesday standing just outside her home. Her father, Tommy Baker, said Jones had a concealed carry license and a weapon in her pocket when she was shot. She didn’t have a chance to use it, he said, because “the coward shot her in the back.”

Doctors were able to deliver her baby, who had remained in critical condition until his death. A Chicago police source said the child had not been struck by gunfire.

The medical examiner’s office performed an autopsy on the infant and determined the cause of death was hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, meaning a lack of oxygen restricted blood flow to the brain. The infant’s manner of death was homicide.

“The death of the child has a direct correlation to the murder of the victim’s mother,” Carroll said.

Chicago police on Wednesday said a person of interest was being questioned in Jones’ slaying. That person, who was not identified by authorities, later was released without charges.

Jones moved to Chicago about two years ago to put to work her criminal justice degree from Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, by accepting a position as a Cook County probation officer, her father said.

Jones’ two other children, 7 and 11, were sleeping inside at the time of the shooting and were not harmed. Baker said the person who killed his daughter robbed her children of a devoted mother who gave them every advantage she could with the means she had.

“You took something from them. You took something from my family, from me. You took my heart, my firstborn, the sweetest little thing. It’s a loss that I’ll never get over,” he said.

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