The family of the Illinois child services worker who was brutally stabbed to death while investigating a report of a “child in danger” at a home is completely devastated by the woman’s senseless murder.
Deidre Silas, 36, was allegedly killed Tuesday on a visit to home of six kids in Thayer by Benjamin Reed, 32, who was taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder, officials reportedly said.
Silas’ grief-stricken father Roy Graham tried to make sense of the tragic loss of his daughter, a married mother of two daughters.
“Why do you really attack my daughter? I can’t understand why you’d do that,” Graham told The Associated Press. “I know she’d be begging for her life. Why? She didn’t come to talk to you … That’s brutal, mischievous, hardcore stuff.”
Police said they found Silas dead at around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday after they were called to the house, found signs of blood outside and forced their way in. Silas died from “multiple sharp force injuries and blunt force trauma,” Sangamon County Coroner Jim Allmon told The (Illinois) State Journal-Register.
The circumstances that led up to the killing weren’t clear. Officials haven’t disclosed Reed’s relationship to the children that were inside the home at the time of the attack, but said they were now in protective custody.
Reed, who was hospitalized for a gash on his hand, is being held on a $5 million bond.
At a press conference this week, law enforcement authorities didn’t discuss the nature of the call that brought Silas to the home or say why she responded alone – but the labor union that represented Silas confirmed in a statement that the call was on “children in danger.”
AFSCME Council 31 Executive Director Roberta Lynch said Silas joined the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services in August after seven years with the Department of Juvenile Justice.
“This tragedy is a stark reminder that frontline DCFS employees like Deidre do demanding, dangerous and essential jobs every day, often despite inadequate resources and tremendous stress,” Lynch said in a statement.
Silas’ husband, Andre Silas, told TV station WICS / WRSP he was worried his 2-year-old daughter wouldn’t remember her mother. The couple also has a 5-year old.
“Don’t take her death for granted,” Andre Silas said as a message to the department. “Use it for information and make sure you guys come up with something to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
With Post wires