2-year-old Boy Found Alone Inside Apartment With Mother, Grandfather Shot Dead

A 2-year-old boy was found inside an Illinois apartment with the dead bodies of his mother and grandfather. The deceased victims were shot dead in what Chicago police believe is an isolated incident.

Cops discovered the bodies after the deceased woman's co-workers requested a welfare check Wednesday. They arrived at the apartment in the East Chatham neighborhood on Chicago's South Side and found the victims, identified as 27-year-old Javonni Jenkins and her father, 79-year-old Curtis Hardman.

Jenkins' toddler son, CJ, was unharmed, NBC Chicago. The mother worked as a medical assistant at Holy Cross Hospital and did not show up to work Wednesday.

"I didn't know what was going on. I just knew something was wrong because she did a 'no call, no show' at work." said Jenkins' co-worker, Nicole Worth, who added that she was the one who requested the welfare check.

Worth said she tried calling Jenkins and found it strange that her 2-year-old son was answering the phone.

"No one was answering so finally the baby answered. We tried calling again through FaceTime to see if he answered, and he answered," another co-worker, Viviana, told ABC7 Chicago.

The colleagues said they spent several hours with the toddler on FaceTime and raised the alarm when they didn't see Jenkins the entire time.

"The whole time I had the baby on the phone, he was very content, playing with his toys," Worth told the outlet. "Once I had that baby on the phone and after a certain amount of time of no parents calling the baby, you don't hear that -- there's something wrong."

She and another co-worker went with the police to Jenkins' apartment around 11 a.m. Wednesday, Worth said.

"We came a little too late," Worth told the outlet. "We saved the baby. That's all we could do."

An unidentified friend told NBC Chicago, "[The police officers] gave us the baby. They gave us CJ and then we walked downstairs until they came in and informed us that [Jenkins] was gone."

Officials did not release details about a potential suspect or a motive behind the victims' deaths.

"She doesn't even have an enemy in this world," Germaine Owens, Jenkins' cousin, told the outlet. "For somebody to take her life, you've got to be some demon or monster."

Owens said Jenkins' mother passed away when she was four and was raised by Hardman, described as a devoted father and grandfather. CJ is now reportedly being taken care of by family.