East St. Louis, Ill. – This was a community desperate for answers Sunday. But St. Clair County Coroner Rick Stone provided only more disturbing details when an autopsy revealed three children found dead Saturday in their apartment’s washer and dryer had been drowned, probably in the bathtub, days after their mother and her fetus were killed.
It is unclear how the children spent the days between their mother’s death and their own, but police said they were last reported alive Sept. 18 with their mother’s friend Tiffany Hall.
Hall led authorities Saturday to the children’s bodies and has been charged with killing their mother, Jimella Tunstall, who was seven months pregnant, and her fetus.
Investigators have not sought murder charges against Hall in the deaths of the three children.
Many in the community turned to their churches Sunday for comfort. Police chaplain Kendall Gran ger, pastor at New Life Community Church, said prayers for the family of the deceased, for the city and for the perpetrator.
“A lot of people are confused. … They are hurt,” Granger said.
Assistant pastor M.C. Johnson prayed for God to turn East St. Louis around.
“Shine a light on our city ravaged now by darkness and evil,” he said.
Denise Tunstall, Jimella Tunstall’s aunt, said of the children: “They were nice, sweet kids.”
The oldest, Demond Tunstall, 7, sang in a children’s church choir in O’Fallon, Ill., she said. He had a hard time accepting foster care when the state had taken the children from their mother, Denise Tunstall said.
Otherwise, he was like most little boys who loved superheroes – Superman and Spider-Man were his favorites.
Demond’s body was found Saturday in the clothes dryer; the bodies of the younger children, Ivan Collins Jr., 2, and Jenela Tunstall, 1, were found in the washer.
Stone said the children likely had been dead for several days.
Investigators had been to Jimella Tunstall’s apartment looking for Hall and later looking for photos of the missing children to give to news media but didn’t search the washer and dryer, authorities said.
More tests will be conducted to confirm the preliminary autopsy results, Stone said.
Authorities believe that Tunstall was killed Sept. 15 and her fetus removed by using scissors. That day, Hall summoned authorities to a Centreville park and reported that she had given birth to a stillborn baby.
The dead baby was taken to a hospital, where an autopsy could not determine the cause of death.
During a funeral for the baby Thursday, Hall reportedly confessed to her boyfriend, a sailor, that she had killed her cousin and taken her fetus.
Authorities found Tunstall’s body in weeds near the home of Hall’s mother.
Hall was found several hours later, and she quickly confessed to killing Tunstall, police sources said. A massive search began for Tunstall’s three children.
At the public housing complex where Tunstall and her children lived, children scampered around the walkways and played in the grassy patches in front of the worn apartment doors Sunday. Their mothers kept a close eye on the toddlers.
Precious McMillian, 22, lived a few doors down from Tunstall; Elesha Solomon, 26, also lived nearby. McMillian said she cried while she watched the bodies of the three children being carried out on stretchers Saturday night.
“After our kids have been playing here all week, they find those kids. It’s devastating,” Solomon said. “The whole time we were out here talking, them babies were in there.”
Neighbors said Tunstall mostly kept to herself. She didn’t let the kids play outside in the rough housing project very often, but when she did, Tunstall would sit on a milk crate outside her door and watch them.
Her sons had a little green riding tractor they would share with the other children.
Tunstall made sure she walked Demond a few yards down to the school bus stop every morning, neighbors said.
Stuffed animals covered the porch at Tunstall’s apartment.
“Those were my friends,” a boy said as he walked by.
