Prosecutors reportedly said that charges could be reduced against the Illinois man accused of killing and dismembering his 2-year-old son in 2015 after he cried while having an allergic reaction to milk.
The family of Kyrian Knox told WBBM Wednesday that the state’s attorney’s office informed them that they may reduce murder charges against Kamel Harris, who’s accused of killing and dismembering Knox before discarding his remains in a Chicago lagoon. The news station reported that the toddler’s severed head, hands, and feet were recovered Labor Day weekend 2015 and it took authorities two months to identify the remains through DNA testing.
It was in 2016 when police accused Harris of killing his lactose-intolerant toddler son for crying after ingesting milk. Harris was reportedly watching his son while the child’s mother moved from Rockford, Illinois, to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
“He kind of just snapped and couldn’t deal with it anymore,” Area North Commander Kevin Duffin said in November 2016, according to The Chicago Tribune.
Authorities accused Harris of falsely reporting his son’s disappearance around the time his remains were found in Garfield Park Lagoon. However, officials believed the toddler had vanished in August 2015.
The Tribune reported that a break in the case occurred in late 2015 when police located blood in Harris’ vehicle. Though Harris denied his son was in his car, police reportedly learned in summer 2016 that the blood belonged to the slain toddler.
It remains unclear how exactly Knox was killed. In 2015, the Cook County medical examiner’s office ruled his death a “homicide by unspecified means,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The outlet reported that investigators reached a dead end shortly after the discovery of Knox’s body because the last person believed to have seen him stopped cooperating.
Harris is expected to appear in court next week. The state attorney’s office reportedly declined WBBM’s request for comment.
[Featured image: Kyrian Knox/Facebook]
