Weeping Father Pulls Gun, Stops Infant’s Life Support

Rudolfo and Tamara Linares visited their comatose son in the hospital for the last time Wednesday morning.

After spending a few minutes with the infant, Tamara left the room. That is when, police say, Rudolfo drew a .357-caliber handgun, which he pointed at the lone nurse in the room. He then disconnected the respirator that had kept 15-month-old Samuel alive for the past eight months.

Weeping, Rudolfo Linares cradled the baby in his arms for 40 minutes until the boy died.

Linares, a 23-year-old painter who lives in the suburb of Cicero, was charged with first-degree murder in the incident, which happened at Rush Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

At a Wednesday evening court hearing, Linares was released on a $75,000 recognizance bond, which means that he does not have to post any bond money unless he fails to appear at future hearings.

Assistant State’s Atty. James Piper, in arguing that Linares be held in jail, told Judge Marvin Ruttenberg that the weapon was cocked and that Linares had threatened to “kill anybody who interfered.”

Ruttenberg told Linares to appear in court again today.

Tamara Linares was not charged in the death. “She was never really considered a suspect,” said Lisa Howard, a spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

“This is the best thing,” Tamara Linares told radio station WBBM-AM on Wednesday. “My baby is out of his misery. He’s in heaven now.”

The child had been hospitalized since Aug. 2, when he swallowed a balloon and it blocked his trachea. The obstruction caused a lack of oxygen to his brain.

“Basically, he’s been comatose” and surviving only on a respirator since then, a Police Department spokesman said.

The Linareses were told Tuesday that Samuel would be moved to a long-term care unit, said Carolyn Reed, the hospital’s director of public relations. “His condition has been stable for some time. He hasn’t been critical in the sense that his signs have been going up or down . . . . They expected this child to die at any time.”

Except for pointing the gun at the nurse, authorities said, Linares never seemed a threat to anyone during the incident.

The nurse called security, which in turn called the Chicago police. Linares kept nurses, doctors and the police at bay by pointing the gun at the baby.

“I’m not here to hurt anyone. I’ll only hurt you if you try to plug my baby back in,” police Sgt. William Rooney quoted Linares as saying.

After a time, police say, Linares felt for a heartbeat. When he found none, he asked a doctor for a stethoscope. A doctor slid the stethoscope across the floor to him. When he determined that the baby was dead, Linares “broke down crying, turned the weapon over to the police and surrendered,” said a Police Department spokesman, who asked not to be identified.

Reed said Linares first tried to disconnect Samuel’s life-support system last December or January.

“He disconnected it,” Reed said. “People were able to subdue him. The child was examined. There was no change. We did our own investigation and it was determined that the child was OK.”

After that incident, the pediatric intensive-care unit considered restricting Linares’ access to his son but decided to simply have a nurse present when he visited.

Rooney said Linares has two other children, both under 5.

The Linareses live on a narrow street of modest bungalows in the heart of Cicero, a working-class Chicago suburb. Luciano Reyes, their landlord, who lives in the apartment below them, said he was stunned by the news.

‘He Seemed Cheerful’

“He was a very quiet, respectful guy,” said Berniece Kielb, who lived two doors from the Linareses. “He said good morning. He seemed cheerful, smiling. He wasn’t depressed and walking like he had the world on his shoulders.”

She said he spent all of Tuesday afternoon working on his car. The two had joked together. “I think what he did was an act of kindness and compassion,” Kielb said. “I feel like he loved that boy . . . . He must’ve been in such a state that he said: ‘This is enough.’ ”

The neighbors all knew about the accident that had befallen little Samuel. Occasionally, they would ask Linares or his wife for the latest news.

“He never wanted to actually talk about it,” said Frank Glab, another neighbor. “He’d say: ‘They say he’s getting better, but I don’t know.’ I knew his heart was bleeding because he couldn’t bring him home.”

Reyes said he did not know much about the family. Tamara Linares told him that her husband was originally from Texas but had lived many years in Chicago.

Kielb said she believed that it was wrong for Linares to be charged with murder. “I feel he’s given himself his own conviction,” she said. “He’s got to live with this for the rest of his life.”