Detroit toddler's death ruled homicide, manner still unknown

“It’s sad, I kind of knew it was coming,” Keon Jones, the father of Deanna Minor’s other children had a feeling something wasn’t right.

A little over a week later, a maintenance worker discovered 3-year-old Aaron Minor’s badly decomposed body inside his mother’s apartment on Trumbull in Detroit on May 25.

Ten days before that, Aaron’s mother Deanna was rushed to the hospital after she was found unresponsive on the lawn outside the apartment complex. She would eventually be transferred to a psychiatric hospital. Medical personnel never knew there was a toddler left alone inside the apartment.

But Jones suspects little Aaron may have already been dead.

“She was just saying how much she loved her kids. She said she was sorry, she loved her kids so much, and tell them she loved them. So I thought she was going to hurt herself,” Jones said.

The Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office has ruled the toddler’s death a homicide, but despite an autopsy and toxicology tests, the cause of death was inconclusive.

Jones says around the same time Deanna was rushed to the hospital, he received nearly a thousand texts from his ex. He didn’t understand what they were about until he says he watched the news and saw that he baby had been found dead.

“Until I saw the news a week later, I went back and started reading the text messages then I realized she had done something bad,” Jones recalled.

We’re told Deanna is mentally ill and suffers from depression.

Jones says child protective services removed his children from their mother’s home back in 2014 and they’ve been living with him ever since.

At the time, he couldn’t afford to take Aaron, who has a different father who is currently incarcerated.

Deanna’s relatives say social services was working with her at the time of the boy’s death. Whether Deanna is still being treated at a psychiatric hospital is still unclear.

“I tried to stick with her and help her as much as I could,” Jones said, “Until I couldn’t help her anymore because I knew it wasn’t safe for me at that point.”

At this time, police say they have not yet received notification from the Medical Examiner’s office that the death was ruled a homicide. So it’s still unclear whether the mother or anyone will face any charges.

Her mental health concerns would also play a role in the charging decision.

Because Deanna was found outside of her apartment, EMS workers did not ever enter her home during the medical run. After an internal investigation, Fire Commissioner Eric Jones tells FOX 2’s Taryn Asher that the EMS workers “behaved appropriately.”