ROCK ISLAND, Ill. — Editor's note: The above video originally aired March 14, 2020.
A Rock Island County judge sentenced a Rock Island woman to prison on Wednesday, March 23 for the death of her infant son. Just days earlier, her boyfriend was found not guilty in the same incident.
After a 911 call, police arrived March 10, 2020, to a home on 12th Avenue and found 4-month-old Elias Austin dead. An autopsy revealed the cause of his death was blunt force trauma to the skull, among other significant injuries.
Austin's mother, then-23-year-old Tanda Allee, and her boyfriend, then-20-year-old Mateo Williams, were taken into police custody on $2 million cash bonds and charged with first-degree murder.
On Monday, March 21, a county judge found Williams, now 22, not guilty of murder. He was released from custody.
Allee, now 25, received a four-year sentence Wednesday, with credit for time already served, after a plea bargain that brought the charges down to endangering the life or health of a child and causing death, a Class 3 felony.