MILWAUKEE — Romuan J. Moye will spend 40 years in prison for the death of his 12-year-old son, Jacarie Robinson, whose emaciated and decomposing body was discovered on a living room couch in October 2023.
In August 2024, Moye, 45, pleaded guilty to first-degree reckless homicide, chronic neglect of a child resulting in bodily harm, and failure to report the death of a child.
“I don’t understand this at all. It’s unconscionable. In my thirty years, the most vicious and aggravated thing I have ever seen,” said Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Laura Crivello at the sentencing hearing.
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| Jacarie Robinson |
The tragic chain of events began on October 10, 2023, when Milwaukee police officers responded to a home on North Elmhurst Road for a report of a person dead on arrival.
Inside, they found Jacarie’s body wrapped in a blanket on the living room floor, a torn white t-shirt covered his head, and maggots were visible on his face and mouth, as per NBC News.
According to police reports, the boy appeared extremely malnourished and emaciated, his body starting to decompose, and a few drops of dried blood lay near his feet.
An autopsy performed the following day revealed fractures in both of Jacarie’s arms and his right ribs.
The conditions inside the house were overwhelming as detectives noted a powerful stench of mold, feces, and decay.
Additionally, Garbage was piled high in the kitchen, and the refrigerator contained moldy food, as reported by NBC News.
According to Jacarie’s older brother, who had entered the home and found the body, Moye had been keeping family members away from Jacarie for months.
The last time the brother saw Jacarie alive was in August 2023, on the boy’s birthday, and he recalled that Jacarie looked “extremely skinny.”
Around that same period, Moye had sent two of Jacarie's siblings, who were all living with them, to stay with their mother for a couple of weeks, saying he needed to “take care of something.”
Police say all three children were his and they shared the same mother and father.
Jacarie’s siblings later told investigators that Moye would punish Jacarie for stealing food, and that the boy “was not eating and sleeping a lot,” court records state.
Also, Jacarie was not allowed to join his brother and sister at their mother’s house because, according to Moye, he was grounded.
The children’s mother, Yalwan Robinson, said she had not seen her son in person for three years, though she had spoken to him on the phone roughly five weeks before his body was found.
While the other two children were staying with her, she grew increasingly concerned about Jacarie and threatened to call the police because Moye would not let anyone see him.
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| Romuan Moye |
After Jacarie’s death and the initial filing of charges in October 2023, Moye disappeared, and he remained on the run until his arrest in February 2024.
During those months, he exchanged text messages with his own mother, who had heard what happened, and she urged him to turn himself in.
“You may as well turn yourself in, you are going to prison for life,” she wrote in one text message.
Once in custody, Moye was held on $500,000 bail and ordered to have no contact with any of his surviving children.
He faced a maximum possible sentence of 82 years in prison if convicted on all counts but on August 29, 2024, he entered a plea agreement, as per ABC7Chicago.
“He was confined to a living room by his own father. A person who is supposed to love him, care for him, raise for him, keep him safe, provide for him, slowly tortured him and killed him,” said Deputy District Attorney Matthew Torbenson, while describing the cruelty inflicted on Jacarie.
Yalwan Robinson, Jacarie’s mother, also addressed the court that day. “When I read Jacarie’s autopsy, I could not believe it,” she said.
In the end, Judge Crivello sentenced Moye to 40 years in prison followed by 20 years of extended supervision on the homicide charge.
For chronic neglect of a child, she added a consecutive term of seven and a half years in prison plus five years of extended supervision.
On the charge of failing to report the death of a child, Moye received a concurrent sentence of one and a half years in prison and four years of extended supervision.
With the sentences lined up in this way, Moye’s total time in custody will reach well beyond four decades before he is eligible for extended supervision.
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