Josiah Brown survived for six days after his rescue from Lake Michigan before his death turned an attempted-murder case into a homicide prosecution.
CHICAGO, Ill. — The criminal case that ended with a 40-year prison sentence for Victoria Moreno began with a rescue effort at Navy Pier, where divers pulled her 3-year-old nephew from Lake Michigan after he had been submerged for about half an hour.
Josiah Brown was alive when rescuers recovered him on Sept. 19, 2022. He had gone into cardiac arrest and was taken to a Chicago hospital in critical condition, giving his relatives a period of hope even as prosecutors accused Moreno of deliberately pushing him from the pier. Josiah died six days later, on Sept. 25. The Cook County medical examiner determined that his death resulted from complications of drowning and classified it as a homicide. Nearly four years afterward, Moreno pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. Cook County Circuit Judge Thomas Byrne sentenced her to 40 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections and found her guilty but mentally ill, according to court reporting.
The six days Josiah survived shaped the prosecution from the beginning. Police initially arrested Moreno on charges that included attempted first-degree murder and aggravated battery to a child younger than 13. At that stage, authorities were dealing with a critically injured child rather than a death. Once Josiah died, prosecutors upgraded the case to murder. That change set in motion years of legal proceedings, including repeated examinations of whether Moreno was mentally fit to stand trial. The case ultimately ended by plea in 2026, avoiding a jury trial over evidence that included surveillance footage, witness accounts and statements Moreno made to investigators.
People at Navy Pier had been drawn into the emergency before they knew who the child was or how he had entered the water. Witnesses saw Josiah struggling and called for help, according to prosecutors and reports from the time. A life ring was obtained, but the boy eventually disappeared below the surface. One witness later recalled seeing his face before he went underwater. Chicago Fire Department divers searched the lake and recovered him after roughly 30 minutes. The rescue effort, rather than any assistance from Moreno, became a central part of early descriptions of the case. Prosecutors said she remained near the scene but made no effort to save her nephew.
Investigators quickly began examining why the child had been at Navy Pier in the first place. Prosecutors said Josiah had been at the Des Plaines home where he lived with relatives earlier that morning. Moreno took keys to the family vehicle and left with him without permission, authorities said. Relatives were especially worried because Moreno was not supposed to drive and because of another incident about a week earlier. Prosecutors said she had taken several children from the home to Navy Pier without permission on that occasion as well. An older child contacted family members and provided their location, allowing relatives to find out where they had gone.
The Sept. 19 trip took Moreno and Josiah from Des Plaines into Chicago. Prosecutors said Moreno first tried to take the boy to the Shedd Aquarium but was unable to enter because she had cash and could not use it to purchase admission. She later went to Navy Pier and bought Josiah food. The ordinary details of that outing became important because investigators used them to establish the route and sequence leading to the lakefront. Moreno later told police she had brought her nephew to Navy Pier to go on rides. By then, however, officers were examining surveillance footage that prosecutors said showed what happened near the edge of the pier.
According to the prosecution’s account, Josiah moved beneath chains intended to separate visitors from the water’s edge. Moreno crossed into the area as well. Prosecutors said surveillance video showed her position herself over the child and push him into Lake Michigan when other people were not immediately nearby. Her defense disputed that interpretation before the guilty plea, arguing that Moreno’s position near Josiah did not necessarily eliminate the possibility that he fell accidentally. The question of intent would have been one of the central issues at a trial. Moreno’s eventual guilty plea meant jurors were never asked to decide between those competing accounts.
Her behavior after Josiah entered the lake also drew scrutiny. Prosecutors said Moreno sat or stood nearby without calling for help as other people reacted to the child in the water. Witnesses told authorities that her conduct seemed unusual during the emergency. When police began asking questions, prosecutors said Moreno initially indicated that she did not know the boy and was merely a witness. She eventually acknowledged that he was her nephew. Investigators treated those statements, together with the video and witness observations, as evidence in a case that was initially about an attempted killing and became a murder prosecution after Josiah died.
Josiah’s family publicly focused on the child as he fought for his life. His grandfather, Dan Brown, described him in local reporting as a “bundle of joy,” full of energy and eager to do things. In the days after the rescue, relatives asked for prayers and hoped he would recover. His death on Sept. 25 changed those circumstances permanently. The medical examiner’s homicide ruling established that his death resulted from the drowning, while prosecutors moved to amend the criminal charges against Moreno. Family members later made arrangements related to organ donation, according to contemporaneous reporting.
The prosecution did not move quickly from the murder charge to trial. Questions about Moreno’s mental health became an important procedural issue. Her attorneys said she had been diagnosed with depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder and had received treatment and medication. In February 2024, a judge found her mentally fit to stand trial while medicated. Defense attorneys later received permission to arrange another psychiatric examination, and court proceedings continued. Shortly before her 2026 plea, Moreno was again found fit to proceed while receiving medication. Those findings concerned whether she could understand and participate in the court process, not whether prosecutors had proven the murder charge.
By the time the case approached a possible trial, the evidence had been discussed in court and news reports for years. Prosecutors had described surveillance video of the pier, accounts from witnesses, Moreno’s changing statements and the circumstances under which she removed Josiah from the family home. The defense had challenged the claim that the child was intentionally pushed. A trial could have required witnesses to return to those events and jurors to examine the evidence in detail. Instead, Moreno entered a guilty plea to murder. Byrne’s guilty-but-mentally-ill finding recognized the mental-health record while still producing a murder conviction and decades-long prison term.
The sentence closes the criminal prosecution but does not change the sequence that made Josiah’s death a homicide case rather than an immediate murder investigation. For six days after the rescue, the 3-year-old remained alive while authorities pursued attempted-murder allegations. His death then transformed the case, and the ensuing proceedings lasted almost four more years. That long legal path ended with Moreno, now 38, admitting guilt rather than taking the case to trial and receiving a 40-year state prison sentence.
Currently, Moreno is under sentence to the Illinois Department of Corrections. The final judgment resolves the criminal charge arising from Josiah’s death, while the public record still traces the case back to the witnesses who sought help at Navy Pier, the divers who recovered him from Lake Michigan and the six days his family waited while he remained hospitalized. No further murder trial is scheduled because Moreno’s guilty plea ended the case before a jury was empaneled.
Author note: Last updated November 6, 2026.