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Chandler, Arizona (KPHO/KTVK) — The father of the Chandler baby who was drowned – allegedly by his 19-year-old mother – said he was supposed to have his son Wednesday night.
“She took away the best thing in my life. There’s nothing that can ever replace him, and this is the last thing I have of his memories,” Eric Canku, also 19, said of his son’s mom, Jenna Folwell, while clutching one of the baby’s onsies. “I just don’t know what kind of person would do that to an innocent child.”
Rainer Canku-Folwell was just 4-weeks-old. Folwell called 911 Wednesday afternoon to report that the baby had been kidnapped from a park.
Police later found Rainer’s body in a duffle bag in Folwell’s apartment.
Folwell was arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder and is being held on a $1 million cash-only bond.
Canku spoke at Folwell’s initial court appearance Tuesday morning.
“She took away my life with Rainer the moment she took his life,” he said. “I want her to have a life without parole,” he said. “She can live every day knowing what she did to the poor innocent child.”
He was clearly emotional when he talked to the media several hours later.
“I had talked to her [Folwell] the day before the murder,” he said. “I picked him up at her house and I fed him a bottle and she was talking to me about how she was making a payment plan for our medical bill for [when he was born].”
Canku said there was no indication of what was to come.
“She seemed perfectly fine; she was smiling and she was just staring at him and little did I know that would be one of the last times I would get to hold him.”
According to court documents, Folwell used her cell phone to search for “ways to die instantly,” “missing babies cases,” “how long it takes babies to drown,” and “reasons parents kill their babies.
Police said there were more than 100 searches along those lines.
“I don’t know if she was just hiding everything from me but she was happy, she was smiling,” Canku said. “She was a good person; I never expected her to hurt a fly. This is just insane.”
Canku said during Folwell’s court hearing and again to the media that Folwell should have reached out to him and his family, that they would have taken custody of Rainer.
“She could have just told me, ‘Just take him,’ and I would have taken him and raised him by myself,” he said. “She had so many options out there. She had so many options and she chose the worst.”
A GoFundMe link has been set up to help pay for Rainer’s funeral.
“Even before his arrival his family loved him beyond words,” the page reads. “His young parents couldn’t make it work together, but, with the help of their families, were co-parenting and trying to make it work. Until yesterday. The unthinkable [happened]. Rainer’s own mother, for reasons beyond comprehension, appears to have taken this beautiful life from us.”
Folwell is due in court for a preliminary hearing on Nov. 5.
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