Parents want Joliet police to dig deeper into daughter’s death

The parents of a Joliet woman who died of a drug overdose in July want police to look harder at the circumstances surrounding her death.

They were joined Monday at a rally organized by the group Speak Up by advocates who say drug and drowning deaths of too many Black people are quickly ruled accidental.

The group, which included local pastors, gathered at a “Break the Silence” rally aimed at drawing attention to the death of Raven Littlejohn and four men whose bodies were found in the Des Plaines River this year. The rally will resume at noon Tuesday outside the Joliet Police Station.

Littlejohn’s death at the age of 37 has been ruled a result of an accidental overdose from a combination of cocaine and fentanyl.

Her mother, Robin Anderson, acknowledges that Littlejohn used drugs and overdosed but believes her death was no accident.

“I say there were other crimes being committed against my daughter,” Anderson said.

She pointed to curious circumstances around her daughter’s death, most prominent being that she was found in a bed with nothing on but a bra and that her clothes were never located.

“She was found in this man’s apartment totally naked, but she had a blue bra on,” Anderson said. “They called that no foul play – accidental cocaine and fentanyl overdose.”

According to a police report on the incident, the resident of the apartment in a Housing Authority of Joliet building at 419 N. Bluff St. said Littlejohn had come over the previous afternoon and that both of them had been in and out of the apartment. He told police that on July 12, when she was found dead, Littlejohn had said she was going to take a shower and go to sleep. He returned with a female companion at 10:30 p.m. to find Littlejohn dead.

The female companion told police that she too had been in and out of the apartment that day and left after Littlejohn went to sleep.

“The Joliet Police department extends our condolences to the family and friends of Raven Littlejohn,” police said in a written statement Monday. “The investigation that was completed revealed no signs of foul play. It was determined by the Will County Coroner’s Office that the cause of death was accidental due to high levels of ingested narcotics.”

Littlejohn’s parents contend that authorities should dig deeper into what happened and that there was never any attempt to find out what happened to her clothes.

Her father, Greg Larkins, said police never had the results of a rape kit exam analyzed. And, the two people who reported Littlejohn’s death were not at the apartment when police arrived.

“Who leaves the scene of something like that?” Larkins asked. “They never interrogated the two to find out what really happened.”

The police report does indicate the two people returned to the apartment while police were there on the night of Littlejohn’s death.

The group also called for a deeper investigation into the deaths of four men whose bodies were pulled out of the Des Plaines River, including Anthony Dunn, 38, who was found in the river at the 700 block of Railroad Street in May, and Quintin Bass, 42, who was found in the same area of the river in September.