Mental fitness may be issue in Rolling Meadows stabbing trial

Defense attorneys say fitness may become an issue in the trial of D'Andre Howard, charged with murder in connection with the stabbing deaths of 18-year-old Laura Engelhardt, her father Alan, 57, and her maternal grandmother Marlene Gacek, 73, at the family's Hoffman Estates home last month.

Police also charged the Hoffman Estates man with the attempted murder of 52-year-old Shelly Engelhardt, Alan's wife and Laura's mother.

Howard, 20, was arraigned in Rolling Meadows Thursday on three counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder. He also was arraigned on multiple counts of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated battery and aggravated unlawful restraint related to other individuals present at the time of the slayings.

Assistant public defender Jim Mullenix said he and co-counsel Julie Koehler will wait for more documentation before deciding whether to make Howard's fitness an issue. To that end, his attorneys recently uncovered a doctor's report diagnosing then-8-year-old Howard with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Mullenix declined to speculate on what might have been the underlying cause for the diagnosis. However, he pointed out that it came during the five-year period when Howard had been shuttled among seven different foster homes.

Howard has been a ward of the state since the age of five when the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services removed him from his family. He also spent time at numerous residential facilities, including Maryville Academy in Des Plaines and Mundelein's Alternative Behavior Treatment Center.

Howard, of the 900 block of Evanston Street, lived with the Engelhardt's oldest daughter Amanda, 23, and is the father of their young daughter, Stelliah. Police say a confrontation between Amanda and Howard precipitated the stabbings.

At Thursday's arraignment before Cook County Third Municipal District Presiding Judge Joseph Urso, prosecutors Maria McCarthy and Mike Gerber tendered to the defense 565 pages of discovery including the defendant's criminal history; police reports from Hoffman Estates, Arlington Heights, Oak Park and Lake County; a video and transcription of Amanda Engelhardt's statement to police; and an Illinois Sexual Offender Registration form. The latter suggests Howard was registered as a sexual offender at some point.

Prosecutors have until late September to decide whether they will pursue the death penalty. Until they do, the court will treat the case as capital. If convicted of first-degree murder of two or more victims, Howard faces a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison.