Long Island Boy’s Death Is Labeled Homicide
A caller to the police reported that a boy needed an ambulance. When the police arrived on Wednesday afternoon at the address the caller gave, an apartment in a house in Amityville, on Long Island, they found an unresponsive pajama-clad child lying on a couch. There were no adults present
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
The house in Amityville, N.Y., where a boy, 4, was found dying on Wednesday. The police labeled the case a homicide.
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By evening, the boy, Adonis Reed, 4, had been pronounced dead. And on Thursday, the Suffolk County authorities declared his death a homicide, although details about who might have killed him remained elusive.
The Associated Press reported that detectives said the boy showed signs of having been assaulted.
"We have no idea what's going on," Adonis's aunt, Rosemary Shorter, 33, said as she placed candles on the stairs of the yellow house at 89 Ketcham Avenue where he was found dead.
"Whoever did this deserves to go to jail forever," she added.
Ms. Shorter said that Adonis's father was in prison and that his mother was "a good mother" who "had a lot of issues."
About a year ago, she said, Adonis's godmother, Lakisha Pitt, the best friend of the boy's mother, took him in.
Ms. Pitt had brought Adonis and his 6-year-old sister to live with her and her boyfriend, Jonathan Thompson, in a house on a quiet street that had been subdivided into apartments, according to the boy's relatives and the landlord. It was there that Adonis was found.
A tenant in the building said she let emergency workers into the apartment and went in with them to make sure Ms. Pitt's dog did not attack anyone.
She did not find the pit bull; instead, she said, she saw Adonis lying on the couch.
Another tenant, Jeff Chessler, 38, said he saw the couple, who he believed were the boy's parents, taking him to school every morning.
"They'd bring him to school — back and forth," he said, adding, "I never would have expected this."
Another neighbor, Eric Erath, 20, who grew up in the house next door, said the couple "kept to themselves."
Since Adonis's death, his sister has been placed in the care of a child-welfare agency, the authorities said. It was not clear whether she was in the house when her brother was found.
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