Judge calls woman charged with stabbing 7-year-old on South Side "pure evil" after outburst in court

The woman charged with stabbing a 7-year-old girl to death in Chicago's Chatham neighborhood in broad daylight last weekend will remain behind bars.

Shavon Gayden, 48, appeared in court Friday after two previous hearings had been postponed. She is charged with first degree murder in the death of Eddimar Hernandez Chacon.

The judge called her "a danger to the community and pure evil," saying she clearly suffers from severe mental health issues after an outburst in court that caused her public defender to recall her release.

Eddimar was walking with her teenage sister to a store on South Cottage Grove Avenue last Saturday morning when she was attacked, stabbed and killed. Afterwards, multiple bystanders battered Gayden to prevent her from escaping, and other bystanders held her down until police arrived.

According to prosecutors, Gayden had been inside a cell phone store trying to pay her bill. They said she became impatient and yelled at a sales associate for a refund, then left. While walking out, prosecutors say she passed the two sisters and, unprovoked, ran towards them with a knife, attacking the older sister and stabbing Eddimar.

Prosecutors said Eddimar had four stab wounds to the back. They said after her arrest, police found a two knives in Gayden's tote bag, including a five-inch blade with the victim's blood on it.

"She's sick," her public defender Brett Balmer said. "The prosecutor said she's evil. I would counter by saying she's mentally ill."

In court, as Balmer was talking, Gayden interrupted her, saying disturbing things like "you're not my attorney," "y'all all gonna die," and "all y'all got AIDS."

Balmer asked for a psychiatric evaluation and the judge signed an order of examination. The public defender said Gayden's mother has been asking for this.

"She has said repeatedly had she of gotten the help that she needed, that she was trying to get for her daughter, this would not have happened," said Balmer. "I believed she used the words 'tick-time bomb.'"

Prosecutors said this into the first time Gayden has attacked someone with a knife. In 2016, the state said she stabbed her boyfriend with a knife. In 2019, prosecutors said she pulled a knife on her son. And in 2023, she threatened to stab a CTA bus driver with a knife.

"The judge in the CTA case ordered anger management," Balmer said. "A pysch evaluation could have been ordered then and that was not done. They ordered anger management and that was it, but I think what you saw in court today was just indicative of just how sick she is right now."

The judge said her violence started 10 years ago and said her choice of weapon is knives and she'd have access to them at home. He said Gayden is "as dangerous as a person could be" and denied her release before signing the order for psychiatric evaluation.