A woman has been jailed for life for stabbing a stranger’s toddler to death in a supermarket parking lot.
Bionca Ellis, 34, was told she would never be eligible for parole at her sentencing in Cleveland, Ohio, on Monday for the June 2024, murder of Julian Wood.
Ellis was branded a ‘monster’ by Wood’s father Jarred Wood in court, 15 months after his wife Margot saw their son die outside a Giant Eagle supermarket in Cleveland.
The schizophrenic maniac was recorded on security cameras stalking Julian and Margot through the store holding a stolen kitchen knife.
She followed them out the door and into the parking lot where she stabbed the boy numerous times in the back and cheek before fleeing.
Margot, who was badly wounded during Ellis’ stabbing frenzy, condemned the crazed killer in court.
‘That woman murdering my son replays in my head every single day. It is my living nightmare,’ she said.
‘I watched him take his first breath when he was born and his last when he died in my arms, covered in blood.
‘The last thing I will ever hear from my son is his scream. I can still see the terror in his eyes and it haunts me every day.’
Bionca Ellis, seen in court Monday, has been sentenced to life without parole for the June 2024 murder of Julian Wood – a three-year-old boy she did not know who she stabbed to death in a supermarket parking lot
Julian, pictured, was stabbed in the face and back as he sat in a shopping cart. His mother tried to rescue him but his injuries were too severe
‘The last thing I will ever hear from my son is his scream and the sound of his pain and fear before he was gone. I can still see the terror in his eyes, and it haunts me every day.
‘If I want my family to be whole, we need to go to the cemetery.’
Margot gave Ellis no mercy and no forgiveness during her emotional speech moments before the life sentence was handed down.
‘You deserve to go to jail for the rest of your life so you can’t hurt anyone else. You don’t deserve a second chance,’ she said.
‘You don’t deserve mercy. You didn’t give my son any… I hate you with every fiber of my being.’
Jarred added: ‘That monster took him from us.
‘Now all of our hearts will forever be missing a piece, and it’s up to all of us to keep his light shining even though his star is gone.’
‘Our home isn’t as loud and chaotic anymore, not the way it used to be. There’s no one dressing up for Halloween as a dinosaur.’
Julian died and his mother Margot Wood, 38, wounded. They are pictured on the right, with the boy’s grandmother, father Jared Wood, and older brother
Ellis did not testify at her trial, as her lawyers claimed she was insane at the time of the murder and didn’t know right from wrong.
They insisted she wasn’t the same person when she was taking her schizophrenia, and expressed remorse for what she did.
‘If nothing more, we learned she is two different people,’ attorney Fernando Mack said. ‘What happened on June 3 is a different version of Bionca.’
Prosecutors agreed Ellias was insane, but convinced the jury she knew exactly what she was doing when she saw Margot and her son in the store and followed them outside.
‘What is unique and so heinous about this case is that a defenseless 3-year-old who had absolutely no ability to fight off his attacker was slaughtered by this defendant,’ Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Anna Faraglia said on Monday.
‘The surveillance video of Giant Eagle demonstrates that this defendant carefully chose her victims and executed her plan.’
Ellis grinned and laughed at a hearing days after the horrific killing, which was recorded on surveillance cameras.
But her demeanor was much bleaker in court on Monday. She sat with a sour expression throughout the hearing.
‘I just want to say I apologize. I’m really sorry for what happened,’ she said softly in her defense on Monday.
Ellis is seen smirking at a court hearing days after the June 2024 attack. No motive has ever been established and her lawyers have sought to claim that she is insane
Julian spent the last moments of his life playing in his mother’s shopping cart as they went on a Monday afternoon grocery run.
Surveillance footage showed that as Margot wheeled them past, Ellis – holding the knife in her right hand – stopped in her tracks, turned around, and followed them.
Less than six minutes later, Julian was bleeding to death on the parking lot asphalt as a badly wounded Margot pleaded with paramedics: ‘don’t worry about me’.
The footage followed Margot wheeling Julian to their red hatchback in the busy car park and popped the trunk to load the groceries inside.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Ellis allegedly unleashed her vicious attack on a mother and child she never met, and for no reason police can discern.
The 911 calls came in bunches, as horrified shoppers and staff on their break had no chance to stop the frenzied stabbing.
‘There’s a child, he’s bleeding all over the place… they’re giving him CPR,’ one caller relayed, her voice strained with panic.
Witnesses barely 15 minutes later described the attack to police at the scene, just after Julian and her mom were rushed to St John Medical Center
‘I hear a scream, I look back, and she’s just stabbing,’ one said.
Julian and Wood were rushed to St John Medical Center but Julian died from the flurry of stab wounds to his back and cheek. His mother’s injuries were not life-threatening
Julian (right) with his older brother at Christmas 2022 when he was two years old
Another, a heroic man in a red shirt, described how Ellis walked up to them and ‘just stabbed’, showing a downwards overhand stabbing motion with his own hand.
‘All I heard was just screaming and the lady grabbed her towel from the bottom of the cart and that’s when it fell over and they collapsed over here,’ he said.
‘And [the attacker] just walked off.’
Shoppers dropped what they were doing and ran from every direction, the witness said, as he watched the attacker ‘trying to get away’ and decided she wouldn’t.
The man got in his car and followed, calling 911 as he drove to report her every move.
Just a few minutes later at 3.04pm, police cornered Ellis in a side street, guns drawn, and made her lie down on the road.
As they slapped handcuffs on her, one officer pointed out a knife lying on the grass inches away.
While these cops were hauling Ellis away, their colleagues were trying to save her alleged victims from bleeding to death.
The scene is a chaos of yelling and desperation as police surround the stricken duo until an ambulance arrives at 3.06pm.
Bionca Ellis, 32, (pictured) was charged with aggravated murder for the shocking and random attack
Surveillance footage showed that as Margot wheeled them past, Ellis – holding the knife in her right hand – stopped in her tracks, turned around, and followed them
Paramedics hoisted Julian on to a stretcher and began CPR, his life draining away from wounds to his back and cheek
Cops made way for paramedics who hoisted Julian on to a stretcher and began CPR, his life draining away from wounds to his back and cheek.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Margot cried in anguish to others trying to staunch her own bleeding.
By 3.09pm, Julian was loaded into the back of an ambulance as paramedics shouted to their colleagues ‘there’s no pulse’.
At that moment, Julian’s father Jake Wood arrived at the scene frantically asking where his son was.
‘My son! My son is he OK?’ he asked anyone who would listen.
He had abandoned his pickup truck with the keys still in the ignition and sprinted across the car park.
Heartbreaking photos of the scene showed groceries scattered across the parking lot’s asphalt where the mother and son were attacked.
Margot was taken to the same hospital and her wounds were not life-threatening, but Julian took too many blows and didn’t survive.
