Several testify as Jada Justice case begins

CROWN POINT | Testimony in the Jada Justice slaying case began Wednesday afternoon following the final selection of four alternate jurors.

The regular jury, composed of seven women and five men, had been seated earlier after two days of intense grilling by Lake County deputy prosecutors and defense attorneys.

The jury is charged with judging the fate of Engelica Castillo, of Hobart. Castillo, who turns 20 on Friday, faces a potential sentence of life without parole if convicted in the death of her 2-year-old cousin, Jada Justice, of Portage.

In opening statements, deputy prosecutor David Urbanski set the stage for the state's star witness, Castillo's boyfriend, 25-year-old Timothy Tkachik, also of Hobart.

Tkachik faced the same five charges in the case as Castillo until he entered into a plea bargain last month, which includes testifying against his girlfriend.

Urbanski's opening focused entirely on what the jury can expect to hear from Tkachik.

Set against a background of heavy drug abuse, Urbanski detailed how the couple first attempted CPR on the child, who had been severely beaten June 13, 2009, and then, finally determining the girl had died, placed her in a garbage bag "like trash."

Urbanski described Tkachik's account of how the couple first failed to burn the body as in a cremation and later folded the child's body, bound it and encased it in concrete in a container before dropping it in a LaPorte County swamp.

Urbanski told the jury Tkachik's story will point to Castillo as the "primary actor" who delivered the fatal blow to the child.

Defense attorney Lemuel Stigler, however, told the jury medical testimony will show the child didn't die as portrayed by Tkachik. Stigler depicted Tkachik as so impatient with children he threw the child into the tub twice during her stay with the couple.

Stigler, too, included the couple's heavy drug abuse in the picture.

There was no intent, so there was no murder, Stigler argued.

Prosecutors led their case with testimony by Jada's mother, Melissa Swiontek, who told the jury Castillo had asked for the two-week visit with Jada beginning June 8, 2009.

On June 16, Swiontek said she was called by relatives with news Castillo had reported the child taken from her car at a Glen Park gas station.

Desperate to find anything that might help find the girl, Swiontek said she went to the couple's Hobart home, where she was so disturbed by Tkachik's behavior that she notified police.

Finding a blanket of Jada's she believed was bloodied, Swiontek also gave that to police, she said.

Also testifying Wednesday, the gas station clerk and two customers told the jury of finding a wildly distraught Castillo pacing and screaming that someone had taken a baby from her car.

Jurors were presented with video and audio tape of the screaming Castillo.

The abduction claim had set off a nine-day nationwide search for the girl.

A close, longtime family acquaintance of Tkachik was last to testify Wednesday, describing her shock at learning of Tkachik's involvement.

A mother figure to Tkachik, who lost his parents in a murder-suicide, struggled to remain composed as she described how she asked to meet with Tkachik after learning from police that he was being questioned by FBI agents in Merrillville.

"I'm a mother. I'm a grandmother," the woman said. She knew how it would feel not to know where your baby is, she said.

"You have to do the right thing," she said she told Tkachik, whom she accompanied after he agreed to lead authorities to the child's body.