Illinois officials are seeking answers after the killing last week of a state child welfare worker during a home visit — the second such tragedy to occur in less than five years.
Deidre Silas, an investigator with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, was stabbed to death last Tuesday when she responded to a call of possible endangerment of children in a home in the central Illinois town of Thayer.
A man related to one or more of the six children who were at home at the time, 32-year-old Benjamin Reed, is being held in the Sangamon County Jail without bond on first-degree murder and other charges. An attempt by The Associated Press to reach Reed’s attorney on Friday was unsuccessful.
Silas’ death is the second time in four-and-a-half years that state officials and the social work community are asking what should have been done, but wasn’t, to prevent it. DCFS investigator Pamela Knight, 59, died following a brutal beating while attempting to remove an endangered child from his father in September 2017.
Like Silas, Knight was alone when she was attacked. Officials at DCFS, which has 23,000 children under its care, have not released details about the circumstances behind Silas’ visit to the home in Thayer, located 23 miles (37 kilometers) south of Springfield, but DCFS Director Marc Smith said last week that agency protocol was followed.
The attack on Silas also marked the 21st time since 2017 that caseworkers were subject to “threats or acts of violence”...
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