Cleveland teen Alianna DeFreeze's murderer prepares for death penalty phase as community activists call for punishment to the fullest extent of the law for Christopher Whitaker....Activists Kathy Wray Coleman of Imperial Women Coalition and Khalid Samad of Peace in the Hood, who both organized a vigil last year after the murder, say their activist groups have 'no mercy on Whitaker,' who dismembered Alianna's body with lawn tools....DeFreeze is one of more than a half a dozen Black women and girls murdered on Cleveland's east side since December 2012 within a two mile radius near East 93rd and Bessemer Avenue up to nearby Harvard Avenue.....Cleveland homicides in 2017 were down from 2016, the city recording some 130 homicides in 2017 and 168 homicides in 2016....By Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 5 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com
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Fourteen-year-old Alianna DeFreeze of Cleveland, and her killer, 45-year-old Christopher Whitaker, who faces the death penalty phase after a Cuyahoga County grand jury on Tuesday convicted him of rape, kidnapping, aggravated murder and other crimes against the Black teen whose body was dismembered
CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio-A Cuyahoga County jury on Tuesday issued a guilty-on-all-charges verdict in the capital murder trial of Christopher Whitaker, the sex offender who kidnapped, raped and dismembered 7th grader Alianna DeFreeze at an abandoned home in January of last year in the Kinsman neighborhood on Cleveland's largely Black east side.
Jurors convicted the 45-year-old Whitaker on all counts, including aggravated murder, rape and kidnapping.
The child rapist and murderer now faces the death penalty phase and though he confessed saying he was high on cocaine and acting out the morning of the gruesome crime, Whitaker and his lawyers do not want him put to death, the height of punishment in the state of Ohio for aggravated murder, the presiding judge in the case of whom decides whether to spare his life following recommendation from the same jury that convicted him.
The bailiff for Common Pleas Judge Carolyn Friedland told Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com Tuesday afternoon that the death penalty phase will begin at 9 am Feb 21 at the Justice Center in Cleveland, which is also docked on the court's public records website.
"I want justice for the murder of my daughter," said Donnesha Cooper, Alianna's mother when speaking before some 7,000 people at the second annual women's march in last month on Public Square in downtown Cleveland.
Cleveland community activist organizers want Whitaker who literally dismembered Alianna's body with lawn tools, including a saw, punished to the hilt under state law, and they are upset.
"We want Christopher Whitaker punished to the fullest extent of the law," said community activist Kathy Wray Coleman of Cleveland, who leads the Imperial Women Coalition, a women's and children's rights group founded relative to heightened rape and murders of Black women and girls and other women and girls in Cleveland since 2009. "And city officials and politicians need to stop pretending that this heightened violence against women and girls, Black and poor women in particular, is not an epidemic in this city and this county or we cannot work effectively to seek to eradicate this growing problem.
Activist Khalid Samad of Peace in the Hood could hardly be contained in words and said he wants Whitaker, a coward, held accountable.
"What this man did to the child is horrific," said an upset Samad. "We have no mercy on him."
The 14-year-old Black girl, whose dismembered body was found in January 2017 by police in an abandoned home at the the 9400 block of Fullmer Avenue in the Kinsman neighborhood on the city's majority Black east side, was snatched by Whitaker in the 3400 block of East 149th Street as she was getting off the RTA bus headed to school.
Alianna never arrived at school, and her mother, notified some 10 hours later, filed a missing person's report.
The child's maimed body was identified by the Cuyahoga County medical examiner's office through dental records.
Whitaker used his sex offender's address of South Euclid, Ohio but lived in Cleveland, investigators said. He served time in prison for sexual battery, among other convictions and is in jail held on a $3 million bond.
DNA linked Whitaker to the crime.
Cleveland recorded 130 homicides in 2017, down from 168 homicides in 2016, the deadliest year in decades and up 13 percent that year from 2015, though neighboring suburbs also saw increases, mainly due, like Cleveland, to heroin and opiate overdoses on the rise.
"As a community we must do all we can to work together for the safety and security of our children," said 11th congressional district congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge shortly after the child's murder. "I thank those working to solve unanswered questions surrounding Alianna's death, and pray for peace, closure and healing."
Alianna is one of more than a half a dozen Black females found dead since 2012 on the city's east side near East 93rd and Kinsman Avenue that have caught the attention of the community and the media, some four women ranging in ages from 20 to 43-year-old, three Black and one White, whose remains were discovered in various places since 2013, at least one in abandoned home within a two-mile radius beginning at East 93rd Street and Bessemer Avenue and transcending to Harvard Avenue.
Police have no leads relative to the murders of the four East 93rd Street women, namely Jasmine Trotter, 20, Ashley Leszyeski, 21 and White, Jamella Hasan, 37, and Christine Malone 43, who left behind eight grown children.
Anthony Sowell, who murdered 11 women and raped three other Black women at his since demolished home on Imperial Avenue on the city's east side between 2008 and 2009 and East Cleveland serial killer Michael Madison, who murdered three young Black women in 2013, both sit on death row.
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