Baby Sema’j’s Death House Burns to Ground

JOLIET, IL — The Preston Heights home where 1-year-old baby Sema’j Lyric-Ma’Love Crosby was found dead under a couch was reduced to rubble in a Saturday morning fire.

The Louis Road house had already been declared uninhabitable by the Will County Land Use Department and no one was living in it.

Deputy Chief Rick Ackerson of the Will County Sheriff’s Department called conditions at the house “deplorable.” Baby Sema’j was just buried Friday. During her eulogy at Prayer Tower Ministries Church of God in Christ, the Rev. Warren C. Dorris Jr. laid the blame for Sema’j’s death at the feet of the Department of Children and Family Services.

“In my opinion, DCFS failed this family,” Dorris said.

The East Joliet Fire Department responded to the fire, which apparently started in a bedroom, about 6 a.m. but decided to let the house burn.

“It was a nuisance,” Deputy Chief Kirk Kelly said of the house.

After the fire department arrived at the house, Chief Bob Scholtes “determined it was a nuisance and decided to let it burn to the ground,” Kelly said.

A neighbor smoking a cigarette as he watched the house smolder said he wasn’t awake when the fire started. The blaze remains under investigation, Kelly said.

Sema’j was last seen playing with six to eight other children in the front yard of her home about 4 p.m. April 25. Her mother, Sheri Gordon, did not call the cops until two hours after her daughter disappeared, police said.

A massive air, water and ground search was carried out for the next day and a half.

Sema’j was finally found around midnight the day after she vanished. Her corpse was hidden beneath a couch in her home, police said.

Sema’j’s body bore no signs of trauma. Her cause of death will not be announced until the results of toxicological tests are returned.

No one has been charged in connection with Sema’j’s disappearance or death, and the police have not publicly identified any suspects.