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Crime

On April 25, 2024, 49-year-old Jennifer Lee Wilson was having trouble controlling her 10-year-old foster son, Dakota Stevens. According to NBCChicago, at some point, he left their home in Liberty Township, Indiana, and Jennifer found him talking to a woman blocks away.

He asked the woman to adopt him and told her his parents hit him in the face and wouldn’t let him call his caseworker.

Wilson told the woman to mind her business and took Dakota back home. He tried to escape again, so Wilson, who is 4 feet 11 and weighs 340 pounds, sat on his midsection for seven minutes while she called his caseworker.

According to NBCChicago, when she finally got up, she thought he was faking, but when she realized he was pale and unconscious, so she started CPR and called 911.

When medical personnel arrived, Dakota wasn’t breathing and had no pulse. He was taken to the hospital and died two days later. An autopsy revealed he died from mechanical asphyxia. He had swelling in the brain, hemorrhaging of the liver and lungs, and organ damage. He only weighed 90 pounds. His death was ruled a homicide.

According to NBCChicago, Wilson was arrested two months later.

Legal Proceedings

According to WAFD, Wilson pleaded guilty to reckless homicide in October 2024. She was facing up to 6 years in prison, the maximum for the crime she pleaded guilty to.

There was outrage and online petitions as people were enraged at the low amount of time she was facing, but it didn’t make a difference. WAFD reported that, in January 2025, a judge sentenced her to 6 years behind bars with a year suspended to be served on probation.

According to the Indiana inmate locator, she is serving her time at Madison Correctional Facility in Madison, Indiana. Her scheduled release date was initially October 13th, 2028. It has since been moved up and she is set to get out on March 9th, 2028.