Judge gets tough on trial continuances in Waukegan baby murder case
A Lake County judge all but denied another trial continuance for a Waukegan woman accused of killing a 3-month-old child in 2012.
Judge Victoria Rossetti told Sarah Gumm, 36, and her attorney Tuesday to work out a plea deal in her first-degree murder case by Feb. 22, because the "likelihood of a continuance is not very good" for her trial to be delayed past Feb. 29.
Rossetti's statements came after defense attorney Jed Stone requested the trial be pushed back to April because a plea agreement in the nearly four-year-old case is "very close to being worked out."
However, Assistant State's Attorney Eric Kalata objected because he said Gumm has rejected multiple plea deal offers in the past.
Gumm faces life in prison if found guilty at trial on the most serious of 14 first-degree murder charges in the case. She also faces two counts of aggravated battery of a child, for which the minimum sentence she could receive is six years after a conviction.
She pleaded not guilty to killing Rylan Aislee Koopmeiners of Kenosha in August 2012, authorities said.
Paramedics were called to Gumm's house for an unresponsive baby girl, authorities said. She died at the hospital later that day.
An autopsy concluded the infant died form blunt force trauma, authorities said.
Gumm had been caring for the child in her house for six weeks before the infant's death. She told police she was changing the baby's diaper and the baby's head hit a table while she was putting the infant down, authorities said.
Authorities said Gumm left the baby at home alone on two occasions the day of the infant's death.
She has remained in Lake County jail on $3 million bail since her arrest.