Content Warning: This article includes mentions of child abuse resulting in death.
Twenty-month-old Quinton Simon was reported missing by his mother, Leilani Maree Simon, in Savannah, GA on the morning of Oct. 5, 2022. The mother, who was not the child’s custodian, quickly became the police’s sole suspect in the toddler’s disappearance and, as it would turn out, heartbreaking demise.
It takes a special kind of monster to hurt a baby, let alone cut their life short. But even this horrifying situation is made that much worse when the person who gravely injures the child is the one who’s most responsible for loving and protecting them, the same adult the baby should be able to trust unconditionally. When that trust is viciously broken as it was in this case, we know we have the most unconscionable of human beings on our hands.
Callously discarded in trash
Twenty-four-year-old Leilani Simon and her partner, Daniel Youngkin, called 911 on the morning of Oct. 5 to report that her 1-year-old son had disappeared. The seemingly distressed mother told the operator that, when she woke up, the front door was open, and her son was missing from his playpen. Oddly enough, judging by the facts of this case, the boyfriend stated he had seen Quinton when he left for work at 6 am.
Wasting no time, the search for baby Quinton was on. It was reported that the mother, however, was not aiding in these efforts. A week after the toddler’s disappearance, the Chatham County Police Department announced that Quinton was believed to be deceased, and Simon was the prime suspect. Days later, the police indicated that they were fairly certain Quinton had been disposed of in a dumpster. After 30 days of valiant search efforts in a massive landfill, human remains, later identified by an FBI pathologist as Quinton’s, were found.
Simon was arrested on November 21 and indicted by a grand jury on Dec. 14, 2022.
State of Georgia v. Leilani Simon
Prior to this terrible incident, Leilani Simon had already been charged with Felony Larceny from the state of North Carolina. Her mother, Quinton’s grandmother, had custody of both of her children, although they all lived in the same house. On Sept. 28, 2022, Simon was ordered by the court to start paying child support, which may hint at a potential motive.
In reading Simon’s indictment, we learn that she met with a drug dealer in the late night hours of Oct. 4. However, investigators believe she falsely stated that the purpose of the meeting was to pay an existing debt and that the only controlled substance she regularly used was cannabis, which she claimed she had consumed in the 24 hours before her son’s disappearance. Although we do not know for a fact what substances Leilani was using, we may reasonably infer that these were hard drugs, and the claim of marijuana use served as a smokescreen.
The overwhelming majority of Leilani’s 19 counts pertain to lies she told several law enforcement officers. Another of these repeated lies attempted to create an alibi for why she had gone to the Azalea Mobile Home Plaza in the early hours of Oct. 5, where she is accused of having discarded her son’s body in a dumpster. Later, the accused killer would admit she had indeed left something in a dumpster at the Plaza, but lied about it being normal household trash.
Another of Leilani’s lies, one she hasn’t been indicted for because it was told to the media, claimed that, if it were proven that she had been at fault for her son’s disappearance she would turn herself in, which, if she had any conscience, she should have.
The bill of indictment accuses Simon of having taken Quinton’s life “with malice of forethought,” assaulting him with an unknown object that caused “cruel and excessive pain” and resulted “in serious bodily injury.”
The murder trial started with jury selection on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024.
Published: Oct 11, 2024 01:09 pm