Mom Smashes Her Son’s Skull And Leaves Him in a Swamp So She Could “Be Free”

Mom Smashes Her Son’s Skull And Leaves Him in a Swamp So She Could “Be Free”

Jordan Marcel Bello Jr. was born in Florida on July 29th, 2016, to parents Sharice Stinson and Jordan Bello Sr. He had brown hair, brown eyes, and a big smile that lit up his entire face. His foster father, Sam Warren, said he was full of joy and laughed so often that they called him “our Mr. Chuckles.” He said Jordan was laid back with an easy smile and a twinkle in his eye. His grandmother said he was a happy and beautiful child who loved everybody. He loved balloons, the characters from PAW Patrol, and making friends. His grandmother called him a people person; he liked to be playful and silly. In one of his photos, he put a lampshade on his head like a hat. His foster father said, “Like most other little boys, we saw Jordan’s mischievous side as well.”

During his time with his foster parents, he learned, explored, and hit all the small but important milestones that mark the transition from infant to toddler. His foster father said, “He learned to roll over in our house. I remember my mom helping him learn to crawl. Jordan learned to walk and talk in our family, and he didn’t do it alone.” The family also had a slightly younger baby girl, and his foster sister grew up beside him, eventually walking side by side. In the summer, he played in the pool and went for rides in a little red wagon. For Halloween, they dressed him as the Cowardly Lion and his foster sister as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. His foster father said he flourished and grew in a community that loved him deeply. He was loved by their whole family, the LifeBridge Church community, the Coast Guard community, and the Door of Hope Foster Care community.

Sharice’s Troubled Upbringing

Jordan’s mother, Sharice, had a troubled childhood. She spent her early life in Apopka, Florida, where her mother, Mary Washington, had grown up. Mary’s father, who was Sharice’s grandfather, was a pastor at the Temple of Faith there and had been since it was founded in 1975. Though she came from a deeply religious family, Sharice’s mother had bad luck with men. Sharice’s father went to prison when she was only 4 years old, leaving Mary to raise Sharice and her siblings as a single mother.

In 2008, when Sharice was 11 years old, a neighbor who worked as a cosmetologist accused her of stealing over $1,000 worth of makeup from her home. According to the Tampa Bay Times, deputies arrested Sharice at her middle school and found some of the missing lip gloss in her backpack. As part of her punishment, she had to write a letter of apology. In it, she said, “I just wanted something to make me look cool because I’ve never even been to the mall.” She closed with a postscript asking the neighbor to tell her she was forgiven. She said, “Could you come over to say you forgive me or write a letter and mail it?”

Around this time, deputies also received seven reports of child abuse (CA) and neglect in her home. One from a former landlord said the family was living in a pest-filled home without electricity. The family was evicted around this time, so the report might have been the landlord’s attempt to get them to leave. CPS removed the children temporarily because of the living conditions but never substantiated any other allegations.

In 2010, the family was interviewed for a news story about homelessness among middle-class families. Mary told the reporter she had lost her job at a financial firm when the company had closed. They had lost their home and car and were living in a motel. Around this time, Mary got remarried, but her luck with men sadly did not improve. Her new husband, Eric Baker, was twice convicted of domestic violence (DV) against her, once while she was battling ovarian cancer. Though he was never convicted of CA, Mary’s sister said he was the reason Sharice was removed from her mother’s care and placed in a group home.

The Group Home and a Dangerous Environment

In August of 2012, Sharice was moved to another group home on Turner Street in Clearwater, Florida. She was still struggling there; she was reported as a runaway at least 19 times over the next 2 years. She also made friends and found some amount of stability. She attended school and worked several part-time jobs. According to other residents, she could be a really good, compassionate friend, but she was also noted to have a dark side—that she was vindictive, manipulative, and moody. One of the staff members, Fezia Shaquan Brown, suspected that she suffered from mental illness but didn’t know if she was actually getting any help. One of the other residents said counseling was not mandatory there. She said, “Most case managers aren’t going to try to talk you into counseling. Most will be like, ‘Okay, that’s less work for me,’ because they would be the ones that had to take you to the appointment.”

When the group home ran out of funding in September of 2014, 17-year-old Sharice was the last resident to leave. The months leading up to the closure, she stopped going to school and quit going to her job. It is unclear where she went after the home closed, but she told staff member Brown that she ended up in a foster program for young adults that age out of traditional foster care. A little over a year after the home closed, Sharice became pregnant with Jordan. Fezia Brown thought the state missed its chance to help Sharice and Jordan. She said, “The system failed baby Jordan before baby Jordan was even thought of, because it failed Sharice.”

By early 2016, a pregnant Sharice was living in Clearwater, Florida, with Jordan Sr. and some of his extended family in his great-grandmother’s home. His mother, Jessica Bello, also lived there along with two of Jordan Sr.’s male cousins and two of his paternal uncles. The family already had a reputation with local law enforcement, and several of the young men were believed to be members of gangs or gang associates. Officers reported dozens of interactions at the home in 2016, including recovering stolen vehicles from the property and arresting wanted individuals. There had been several drive-by shootings at the house and a brick thrown through one of the windows. In June, officers noticed several adults loitering outside the home. They arrested one of the men on a warrant for robbery and aggravated battery. They also noted that a homicide suspect and a known offender were among the group questioned but not detained.

The next month, Jordan was born, and Sharice brought him into an environment which, according to local police, the violence was only escalating. A couple of weeks after he was born, his great-grandmother Lori filed a police report because 145 Hydrocodone pills had been stolen out of her car, but when police wanted to investigate, she wouldn’t let them process it for fingerprints or other evidence. Neighbors also reported that Jordan’s father and other occupants of the home would stand outside showing off their weapons. He wasn’t well-liked in the neighborhood, and police suspected the shootings at the home were done in retaliation against him.

CPS Intervenes

On October 29th, violence erupted once again. Someone shot at his father while he was standing outside. Jordan and another unnamed child were inside during this time. His father walked down the street and someone shot at him again. He also allegedly pointed a gun at a woman during this incident and threatened to kill her, but the woman wouldn’t cooperate with police, so no charges were ever filed. The violence triggered a report to the CA hotline, and an investigator came out to assess the situation. The report from that day noted that the home was filthy and disgusting. There was no food in the kitchen, even though Sharice was receiving food stamps. The report also noted that the parents knowingly allowed their infant son to reside in a dangerous environment.

The day that the investigator arrived, he found 10 to 15 people in the home, and most of them refused to provide any identification. Many were suspected gang members, some had previous felonies, and many had firearms. The investigator asked the people who didn’t live there to leave. They left. Sharice left and took her baby, Jordan, with her. Even though the investigator knew she lived there, she refused to cooperate until she was told the investigator would get a court order forcing her to let him see the baby. Other allegations in the report were that Sharice and Jordan’s father used weed and coke all of the time, and that Jordan Sr. was involved in stealing cars and selling drugs.

Officer Frederick of the Clearwater Police Department told the investigator that he had told Jordan’s grandmother, Jessica, that she needed to kick her son and other relatives out of the home because they were making it unsafe. She refused to do this. Jessica said the investigator was wrong. She said there was no gang activity at her home and said her children were on gang lists but only because they were related to other family members in the neighborhood, not because of their own actions. Jordan later denied the accusations in the report, including that he had been shot at, although the investigator said he admitted it happened at the time. He said, “There were no guns in the house, nobody smoking in the house, no drugs being sold out of the house. It wasn’t dangerous. I just don’t like how everybody is calling me a deadbeat.”

Foster Care and The Flawed Case Plan

Once removed from his parents’ custody in January of 2017, Jordan was placed with foster parents Sam and Juliet Warren. His time in foster care was full of everything his early life had been missing. His new home was clean and safe. He spent time at church with other children and playing at home with his foster sister. His foster parents took him on adventures to the park, the lake, and the ocean. Sam called fostering and adopting “an expression of God’s heart,” saying, “You are literally looking after someone and loving them with your life.” And by all accounts, that is exactly what he and Juliet did: they loved Jordan with their lives. They wanted to adopt him and make him a permanent part of their family, but his mother was still fighting to get Jordan back.

That same month, January 2017, Sharice called the police and claimed that Jordan Sr. had choked her and held a gun to her head. The officer that responded noted that she had red marks and bruises around her throat. He was arrested and charged with DV and aggravated assault, but Sharice decided not to press charges. In April, Sharice was arrested for DV herself. She caught Jordan Sr. texting his ex-girlfriends and admitted she pushed him during an argument about the messages. The next day, he decided to drop the charges and asked to drop the restraining order. Still, none of these arrests resulted in any changes to their case plan, and Sharice was allowed visitation with Jordan as long as she didn’t take him around his father.

On June 18th, she had an unsupervised visit with baby Jordan. It was Father’s Day, so she decided to let Jordan Sr. see the baby even though she wasn’t supposed to, because he was only allowed to have supervised visits. They met at Burger King, and the baby’s grandmother, Jessica, came along as well. Inside, they ran into Danielle Ellis, a woman they knew from the neighborhood. A fight broke out. Though reports of the fight vary—some say Jordan Sr. was fighting with the woman, but Jessica said she was the one who got into the fight with Danielle. Some reports say Sharice only tried to break up the fight, others say she was also throwing punches. Jessica said, “Sharice was trying to get out of the way. As much as I despise her, she was actually trying to protect the baby in that incident. That incident had nothing to do with her and Jordan Sr., it was my incident.” But all the reports agree that Sharice was holding 10-month-old Jordan when the woman tried to punch Sharice, missed, and instead hit baby Jordan in the mouth.

EMTs were summoned to the scene along with police. They found that his lip was swollen and he had a small cut inside of it. Sharice declined medical treatment. The officer said the baby was calm and did not appear to be in any distress. No arrests were made, but a follow-up report was done on the incident. In that report, the CPS investigator noted she did not seem to recognize that being near the fight with the child in her arms put the child in an unsafe situation. During the investigation, a recommendation was made to drug test both parents, but the case manager said that wasn’t part of their case plan. At her next court hearing, Sharice lied and downplayed the severity of the incident and the injuries to baby Jordan, so no changes were made to their case plans.

The contents of the case plan would turn out to be one of the agency’s biggest mistakes. Jordan Sr. and Sharice had a number of problems that were never addressed in the plan. They were using substances, they both have violent tempers, but they hadn’t completed DV or substance use assessments. Sharice admitted she had anger issues; she might have had an undiagnosed mental illness, but she was receiving no targeted help. And even though Sharice had already broken the rules and been uncooperative several times, nothing in the plan required her to cooperate with her case managers and other officials. All of these issues should have been in the case plan. They should have been addressed with services when possible, like DV education and mental health evaluations, and there should have been clear consequences listed if Sharice didn’t cooperate or follow the rules. Instead, the case plan focused on the danger of the environment.

This meant that once Sharice moved to an apartment in Largo, she could legally get baby Jordan back even though she hadn’t gotten the help she needed to take care of him safely. It also meant that once her case manager changed, the new manager never considered that she or Jordan would hurt their child. Now, Sharice was a slick talker. She had been thrown out of her counseling program because she had stopped going, but she never admitted that in court. Instead, she focused on what she thought she was entitled to without ever admitting to what she was doing wrong. At a hearing in early March 2018, she continued this behavior. In audio released by the state, the Guardian ad Litem can be heard asking about whether she has completed her counseling, but Sharice doesn’t answer. Instead, she claimed that she had done everything that had been asked. She made it seem like the Guardian ad Litem was taking too long to verify the paperwork, but she didn’t have the required documentation because it didn’t exist. At one point, Sharice even cried. Her performance was convincing, but her statements were full of lies.

The Court Hearing

Judge: “Jordan Bello 1664, this is a status hearing. Is mother here?”

Sharice: “Yes.”

Judge: “State your name, please.”

Sharice: “Sharice Stinson.”

Judge: “And is father here?”

Jordan Sr.: “Yes ma’am.”

Judge: “State your name… uh, anyone else? Child was excused. Um, yes, I don’t have a date… November 1st, 2016, thanks Mom. Alright, this was set to address unsupervised overnights and the progress of reunification for the mother. Mother’s home study was denied, or is it just Mom, not Mommy and Dad?”

Official: “Right, well, they’re living as their… so the parents are together.”

Judge: “Hold on Mom, you’ll get your chance. Alright, so parents are together and the home study was denied because… so I saw a visitation plan but it just reflects supervised visits, so the parents are not having unsupervised. Alright. Um, Attorney Price?”

Attorney Price: “Yes, we are seeking reunification. Mother has completed her case plan. Father is prepared to move out of the home today and continue to pay half of the rent for the mother.”

Judge: “Okay, well… um, anything from Guardian ad Litem apart from what the department has said?”

Guardian ad Litem: “No, we… we were recently appointed to this case. We haven’t gone out to do a visit of the child in the home, but we… we haven’t been able to observe the parents with their child yet, so we’re working on that.”

Judge: “Okay. Alright, so unfortunately because father’s still in the home, we can’t reunify today. Um, the department would need time to verify that father’s out of the home and um, that Mom is doing this on her own without him. Uh, so the motion for reunification from the mother is denied. Um, if that occurs and the department is able to do an updated home study, a motion for reunification would have to be heard before the judge.”

Attorney Price: “For clarification, are you saying the father cannot contribute half of the rent to the mother?”

Judge: “No, did I say that? No. No, of course that’s acceptable. Well, I mean the agency will have to take that into account, that would be… I can’t say it’s acceptable. I mean, that’s a… that’s something that’s going to happen in the future. He hasn’t even left yet. So, yes ma’am?”

Sharice: “Well, I am the only one on the lease, so if he has to leave today, he can leave today. Like, we’ve already discussed that. But my thing is, is they keep saying, they keep setting back dates, and my problem is is that every time they set back a date, it’s on their time! Like, we’re ready to get this, so like we’ve done everything! Like, I don’t know what else, like what do you want us to do? Because like, I don’t know what reports they’re talking about, but we haven’t had any issues at all. Like, we work together on everything. We visit our son together. I don’t, I don’t see the problem of him not being able to come home to a family.”

Judge: “Okay, that’s… so is father not case plan complying, is that what’s going on, Ms. Garcia?”

Ms. Garcia: “Um, I just recently got documentation of his assessment that he did complete, he did do that. I just need some documentation from him continually going to his appointment.”

Judge: “What assessment? His biopsychosocial? Okay, we were waiting on that. Okay, can I inquire… the mother completed her individual counseling?”

Ms. Garcia: “It’s ongoing. Okay, she’s engaged.”

Judge: “So it sounds like you’re a little bit ahead of the father, um, which is why we can’t reunify while he’s with you, while he’s in your home. Um, but if he did do the psychosocial…”

Sharice: “It said I don’t have to go no more. Yeah, they were going to send the paperwork over to Ariel. My last appointment is on the 31st of next month, of March. Yes ma’am.”

Judge: “Okay, yeah, they just need to verify everything. Unfortunately, it takes time.”

Sharice: “So how long would this take? Because like, we’re like ready… like I, I know like seriously I’m going to cry. Like, we’ve paid out of daycare, like we’ve done everything…”

Judge: “Well now you’re talking about two paths…”

Sharice: “Like no, but we’ve done everything for him to come!”

Judge: “I understand you’re upset, but now you’re, you’re talking about Dad moving out or Dad not moving out, so that’s not what I said though.”

Sharice: “That’s what I heard. You said he’ll move out today. No, he will move out today if that’s what they want him to do. Like, he can move out today because I’m the only one on the lease anyway. We’re just trying to figure out why we keep taking steps back when we’re trying to get 10 steps ahead!”

Judge: “Because you two are not in the same place. Okay, that’s why. Yeah. So, um, I mean the department… I’m sure Ms. Garcia is a very good case manager.”

Sharice: “Not really.”

Judge: “Well ma’am, ma’am, now you’re just being disruptive. And I’m sorry, but I’m… so why don’t you, why don’t you stop interrupting me and listen, because you’re not helping yourself right now and I don’t want to see that. So it’s, it’s kind of precarious right now because the dad has engaged, did his psychosocial. The department needs to review that, and it’s very possible the parents could stay together.”

Sharice: “They said that last time, still.”

Judge: “Well, there’s also the issues of 911 calls. Those will have to be looked into. I mean, there’s a lot going on here, so…”

Sharice: “And who called? Like, and who really called? Because I just went to court for the same lady who made a false allegation for my son to get taken away, and she’s on her way to jail for making false allegations. So she might have made those calls against us. But I honestly don’t know what police reports they are talking about! Like, we don’t even have time to argue, we work so much…”

Judge: “And those… those reports are not being determined here today right now. So maybe the answer instead of waiting till June is to set this for another status hearing. We need documentation that the father has engaged in that individual counseling, and Dad, you said you’ll be done by… um, so you want to set it for early April? Like April 9th?”

Official: “I wish I could. Can we also address the reunification progress with the mother as far as the unsupervised visit? The father’s leaving the home…”

Judge: “He hasn’t left, Ms. Price. We… I’m not going to address that if he’s still there.”

Official: “Well, we haven’t left, so one of the problems is… um, Mr. Kin, I don’t have any time. Well, I have, I have April 23rd. Sure, April 23rd at one. Um, Your Honor… the Guardian ad Litem would not… and I’m asking for unsupervised in the community… uh, that would be for the parents to visit separately, or just for the mother?”

Judge: “Mother can have unsupervised in the community. Okay, without observation? Okay.”

The Downward Spiral

I recommend that at the end of the hearing they scheduled the next one for April 23rd. At that next hearing, Sharice got what she wanted: the magistrate recommended Jordan be returned to her custody. The Guardian ad Litem was still against reunification; she still hadn’t gotten the documentation that Sharice had been attending her required counseling sessions, but the magistrate overruled her objection. The case manager supported reunification, and the magistrate, reading that the main problem had been the hazardous environment, determined that “no evidence was presented to show that the circumstances that caused the out-of-home placement have not been remedied to the extent that the return of the child to the mother’s care with an in-home safety plan will not be detrimental to the child’s safety.”

Sharice was given overnight visitation starting in 10 days, and her reunification was to happen in no more than 20 days. Her reunification was set for May 31st, and after another hearing, Jordan Sr.’s was set for June 11th. The case manager promised the foster parents that they would do everything possible to ensure Jordan’s safety. He would check on the boy twice a week, and Sharice would have services to help her adjust to being Jordan’s full-time caregiver. But when she continued to be as uncooperative as she had been the entire time, those promises were soon broken.

During the pre-reunification period, Sharice was required to attend five appointments with a clinician in order to prepare for the transfer of custody. She missed three of those appointments, but the case manager didn’t slow down or stop the transfer. After Jordan was handed over to her, she was supposed to attend 11 appointments designed to help her deal with a transition that was bound to be difficult. She missed seven of those appointments. The case manager could have flagged her as non-compliant and slowed the reunification process down but chose not to. When the case manager and Guardian ad Litem showed up to check on Jordan, Sharice repeatedly refused to let them in, either lying and saying she wasn’t home or not answering the door.

Not surprisingly, the small amount of progress Sharice had made soon fell apart. After Jordan Sr.’s rights were reinstated in June, the couple was finally allowed to live together as a family. What sounded simple on paper was incredibly difficult in reality. Jordan had been taken away from the home he’d been in as long as he could remember—the home he’d lived in for 18 months—and remember, by this time he was only 24 months old. Though he was usually a happy and easy baby, it is likely he struggled with the abrupt transition. And Sharice had very little experience as a primary caretaker of a baby. The first 6 months that she had Jordan, she had the help of her mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law. Managing work and a new baby is difficult for all couples, but even more difficult for an unstable couple prone to violence.

After less than a month as a family, Jordan Sr. wanted to end his relationship with Sharice. Their problems boiled over into violence. On July 15th, Sharice called the police because of a DV incident with Jordan Sr. Exact details about what occurred are unclear; they were arguing about custody of Jordan. Some sources say Jordan Sr. was dropping his son off and Sharice wasn’t ready to take him back. Other sources say the father wanted to see the baby and Sharice wouldn’t let him. Jordan Sr. denied that a physical altercation had taken place, but Sharice’s mouth was swollen and her lip was bleeding. Still, he wasn’t arrested until he told the police, I quote: “There is going to be a lot of dead cops tomorrow and I’m going to kill that btch too.”*

Responding officers should have called the CA hotline and reported the incident because it involved baby Jordan and happened when he was present. However, they did not. It’s worth taking a second here to explain why that missed phone call was so important in this case. In most states, Child Protective Services is part of the state’s family services division. Now, in Florida, several counties decided in the 1990s to put the local sheriff’s department in charge of those investigations of CA, and those police departments contracted the case management and social services required to outside companies. In Jordan’s case, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office hired a company called Directions for Living. They provided the case management and hired another company, Eckerd Connects, to provide the community-based care. The primary way to communicate serious issues to the other agencies was far from high-tech. The agency with the important info was supposed to call the CA hotline and file a report so the information could be added to the case file. But even though everyone involved was a mandated reporter, including the police officers, that didn’t always happen.

So when the officers who arrested Jordan Sr. forgot to call, their oversight meant that no one who could have helped the baby had information about how this situation had dangerously escalated. It wasn’t discovered until the case manager completed his monthly check for 911 calls on August 3rd and discovered the police report. The incident was reported to the CA hotline at that time, and an investigator was assigned. When the investigator showed up the next day on August 4th, Sharice refused to open the door. He had to call the police to the residence, and they had to negotiate for almost 2 hours and use their bullhorn to demand entrance before she allowed the investigator inside. Despite her unhinged and uncooperative behavior, the investigator decided the danger had passed since the father was no longer living in the home and a restraining order had been issued. The purpose of his investigation was to determine whether the father was a threat to the boy, but he overlooked signs that the mother was unstable and clearly struggling.

Meanwhile, Sharice’s life was falling apart. She wanted to continue the relationship with Jordan’s father, but he wasn’t interested. He was no longer helping her pay for the apartment. She had lost her job and was going to be evicted. Most of her furniture had been repossessed, leaving her apartment bare. She was 5 months pregnant with another baby. When her caseworker wanted to stop by, she either had an excuse or would not answer the door. The Guardian ad Litem tried to visit on August 24th, but Sharice wouldn’t let her inside.

Finally, on August 31st, she met with her case manager. She was emotional during the meeting and said, “I’m trying my best but it seems like it’s not enough.” The manager warned her that if she didn’t address all the issues, she would lose custody of her son. She told him she was worried if Jordan went to live with his dad that she wouldn’t be allowed to see him. They discussed her mounting problems and went over possible solutions for her, including new places to live. He took pictures of Jordan, who looked sad without the smile he wore in most other pictures. They spoke for more than an hour. By the end, the manager said she appeared to be much calmer and told her everything is going to be okay. Before leaving, though he visited her on Friday, he didn’t update his case notes until 2 days later, on September 2nd.

The Disappearance

In the early hours of September 2nd, a bruised and staggering Sharice entered a Hampton Inn and collapsed on the floor of the lobby. She told hotel staff she had been assaulted and needed to call 911. She told detectives that she had been walking to Jordan’s father’s house while carrying the baby in her arms when a stranger in a white Toyota Camry offered her a ride. She accepted because the walk was so long and Jordan was getting too heavy to carry. Inside the car, she said the stranger told her his name was Antoine and he propositioned her for an intimate favor. She said she put Jordan in the back seat and did what he asked for, but refused when he asked for another favor. She said, “He hit me on this side like with his fist like this, and then I even told the lady to see if she could get DNA in my hair ’cause he did pull my hair and kept hitting me. He had like a mason jar with weed in it and he kept hitting me with that.”

After hitting her with the jar, he punched her multiple times in the face and mouth. According to Sharice, she tried to open the car door but said that after that, everything was just a blur. She lost consciousness and woke up in a wooded section of Largo Central Park, alone. Officers were skeptical but worried about the missing boy, so they proceeded as if her story was true and launched a full-scale search for him. Police brought in K9 units, helicopters, and divers to search the park, but they found no sign of Jordan.

They issued an Amber Alert for the missing boy and asked the public to be on the lookout for a 2-year-old wearing a blue shirt with the number 72 on the front, blue gym shorts, black socks, and black and white sneakers. The alert also mentioned a cut on Jordan’s chin, an injury that didn’t appear in the picture the case manager took 2 days prior. Police had found blood and bloody children’s clothes rolled up in a carpet outside Sharice’s apartment, but Sharice explained it away as just an old injury, saying a week prior Jordan had accidentally fallen and hurt his chin and she had taken him to get butterfly stitches. This wasn’t her first lie. It was among several that raised the suspicion of officers. She sat with a sketch artist and provided details for a drawing of Antoine. The artist asked her to describe his hair. She said (and these are Sharice’s words): “I believe it was either brown or black and he had dreadlocks… um, they were kind of large, they were pretty fat.” She said he was about 25 years old, wearing a white tank top and black basketball shorts, and had gold…