By Peter Nickeas
Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — A Chicago man slashed his 2-year-old son’s neck, nearly decapitating him, because the toddler was making too much noise while the father tried to sleep, according to Chicago police.

Rolando Ortiz, 37, called his sister-in-law and confessed to killing Mateo Garcia Aguayo, then took off in the family SUV Wednesday afternoon. Police found the boy’s body in a trash bag in the family’s second-floor kitchen in the 2700 block of South Avers Avenue.

Illinois state police caught up with Ortiz near Kankakee, Ill., a few hours later and he was charged with first-degree murder, police said.

“Mateo wasn’t old enough to make a bad decision. Mateo wasn’t old enough to take the wrong path in life,” Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said at a news conference Thursday evening. “He was just an innocent kid whose trust and safety was betrayed by one man he should never have to question: his father.”

Area Central Detective Cmdr. Brendan Deenihan said Ortiz became “very frustrated that he could not sleep” while he was at home with the boy. “The 2-year-old baby was running around and was keeping him awake. (Ortiz) grabs the 2-year-old in the kitchen and holds him down, (Ortiz) then retrieves a knife, cuts the baby in the throat, causing his death.

“(Ortiz) realizes he just killed his own son, so he makes a pretty weak attempt to cut his own wrists, eventually results in a couple stitches,” Deenihan said. “After realizing he killed his baby, he found a garbage bag full of clothes, he dumped out the clothes, and placed the baby in the bag.”

Ortiz called his wife but could not reach her. The couple works different shifts at the same company, Deenihan said. He then called his wife’s sister and confessed, and she called relatives who lived on the first floor of the home.

They went upstairs and found Mateo dead and Ortiz bleeding.

“We believe we do have the murder weapon, we believe it was a kitchen knife, but it’s not 100 percent corroborated at this time,” Deenihan said.

Ortiz fled the scene. The first officers on scene were able to get a description of the SUV and worked with a joint Chicago Police Department-FBI violent crimes task force to find Ortiz. State police stopped him near Kankakee, and an officer there helped with the arrest.

There are other children in the family who will stay with their mother, though none were home at the time, Deenihan said. It didn’t appear Ortiz was drunk or under he influence of drugs.

An autopsy found that the boy died from “incised wounds” to the neck.
Deenihan said the gruesome crime was traumatizing to both the boy’s family and the responding officers.

“It’s obviously pretty difficult to look in a garbage bag and see what they saw,” Deenihan said. “The officers gotta respond to this scene, they don’t know what they’re walking into, including the ambulance guys. The poor family from downstairs had to walk up and find him. … These guys aren’t robots, they’re police officers, and they have families.”