EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — Three missing children have been found dead, days after their mother's body was discovered with a fetus cut from her womb, authorities announced late Saturday.
The bodies of the children were found hours after a woman was charged and jailed on $5 million bond in the deaths of Jimella Tunstall, 23, who was seven months pregnant.
The children were found together, the St. Clair County coroner's office said. The coroner would not give the location.
Police began a search for Tunstall's two sons, 7 and 2, and 1-year-old daughter, after they found the mother's body last week in a weedy East St. Louis lot.
Authorities continued a desperate search for Tunstall's children after charges against Tiffany Hall, 24, were announced Saturday.
The children were last seen with Hall on Monday, three days before she was taken into custody.
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Before the children were found, Hall faced charges of first-degree murder and intentional homicide of an unborn child in the death of Jimella Tunstall. Hall was being held in the St. Clair County Jail in Belleville.
Relatives of both women told media outlets the two grew up together and attended alternative schools. The woman in custody often baby-sat Tunstall's children, and Tunstall never expressed worry about leaving them in her care, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
An autopsy showed Tunstall bled to death after sustaining an abdominal wound caused by a sharp object, believed to be scissors, said Ace Hart, a deputy St. Clair County coroner.
Hart said he believes Tunstall was knocked unconscious before her baby, seven months into gestation, was removed during a slaying he called "very graphic and very brutal."
The charges came a day after a meticulous scouring of an 1,100-acre state park, just blocks from where Tunstall's body was found.
