Bionca Ellis Case: Insanity Defense, Sentencing, and Appeal

The Bionca Ellis case ended in October 2025 when a Cuyahoga County jury convicted the 33-year-old Cleveland woman of aggravated murder for stabbing three-year-old Julian Wood to death and wounding his mother in a North Olmsted Giant Eagle parking lot on June 3, 2024. Judge John Russo sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole after the jury rejected her insanity defense. Ellis is now appealing.

What Happened at the Giant Eagle

On the afternoon of June 3, 2024, Ellis, then 32, walked into a Volunteers of America Thrift Store next to a Giant Eagle grocery store near Lorain Road and Dover Center Road in North Olmsted. Surveillance video showed her spending about 50 seconds examining knives and testing them against concrete pillars before stealing two of them.¹²

She then entered the neighboring Giant Eagle, where she spotted Margot Wood, 37, shopping with her son Julian. Ellis followed the pair through the store and out into the parking lot. At their vehicle she stabbed Julian multiple times while he sat in a shopping cart. When Margot tried to pull him from the cart and shield him with her body, Ellis stabbed her too.³ Julian was rushed to a hospital and pronounced dead. Margot survived injuries described as non-life-threatening.⁴

Multiple shoppers called 911. North Olmsted officers found Ellis walking away toward Dover Center Road, still holding a knife, and arrested her without incident. She refused to speak with detectives and asked for a lawyer.⁵

Warning Signs Before the Attack

Ellis had a scattered record of low-level trouble across several states in the year before the killing. In May 2023 she was charged with theft at a North Olmsted Walmart, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge, and violated probation by failing to complete a required theft-education program. In January 2024 she was arrested at a Bakersfield, California, hospital for refusing to leave after being discharged.⁶⁷ In March 2024 she was jailed for more than a month in Kissimmee, Florida, on a criminal trespassing charge after refusing to leave a hotel she could not pay for.

More alarming reports came out later. In late February 2024, Cleveland police were called to a shelter after Ellis said she “wanted to kill someone and eat their flesh.” Officers took her to Metro Hospital, where she fought staff in a psychiatric room.⁷ About 30 minutes before the stabbing itself, she walked into the North Olmsted police station to ask about property she believed had been taken during a prior arrest. Told police did not have her belongings, she left.⁸

Competency and the Insanity Defense

A grand jury indicted Ellis on aggravated murder, two counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder, two counts of felonious assault, tampering with evidence, and aggravated theft.⁹ Before trial could begin, the court had to decide whether she was mentally fit to help her own defense.

Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Sara West evaluated Ellis in July 2024 and diagnosed her with schizophrenia, describing her as disorganized in her thinking, unable to hold a meaningful conversation about the case, and hearing voices.¹⁰ In September 2024, Judge Russo ruled Ellis incompetent to stand trial.¹

Ellis then spent roughly five months in competency-restoration treatment. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Megan Testa, who worked on her restoration, testified that the improvement came because Ellis was required to take antipsychotic medication.¹¹ By early 2025 she could converse and assist her attorneys and was declared competent, though experts warned her symptoms would likely return without medication.¹

The Trial and Verdict

The trial opened in October 2025 before Judge Russo in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas and ran about a week and a half. Ellis pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The question for the jury was not whether she committed the attack but whether her mental illness prevented her from knowing that what she did was wrong.¹²

Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutors Anna Faraglia and Jillian Piteo conceded that Ellis has a serious mental illness but argued she knew exactly what she was doing on June 3, 2024. They leaned on the surveillance footage: Ellis choosing and testing knives, entering the store, spotting the Woods, turning to follow them when they moved toward the exit, and trailing them to their car. Prosecutors called the sequence “hunting” and framed it as organized, deliberate conduct rather than a psychotic break.¹ In closing, Faraglia told the jury: “Many people in our country suffer with mental illness every single day. But they don’t go out and murder people.”¹³

The state’s rebuttal expert, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Noffsinger, interviewed Ellis about a year after the crime, when she was back on medication. He testified that although Ellis does have schizophrenia, she did not have a mental defect that prevented her from knowing right from wrong at the time of the stabbing, concluding that rage rather than delusion drove the attack.¹⁴

Defense attorneys Fernando Mack and Carlos Johnson argued the opposite. Dr. West testified that Ellis had been hearing voices telling her “someone needed to die” and was experiencing “a rising crescendo of paranoid fear and irrationality” that left her unable to consider the wrongfulness of what she did.¹⁰ The defense also pointed out that Ellis made no attempt to hide the knives, walked past several people without attacking them, and, after the stabbing, walked away casually. Her attorneys said that detachment was consistent with psychosis, not with someone who understood what she had done.¹

The jury got the case on the afternoon of October 14, 2025, and returned a verdict on October 15 after more than eight hours of deliberation. Ellis was found guilty on all counts, including aggravated murder, two counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder, two counts of felonious assault, endangering children, and misdemeanor theft.¹⁵¹⁶

Sentencing

Judge Russo sentenced Ellis on October 27, 2025, to life in prison without the possibility of parole.¹⁷ Both of Julian’s parents spoke first. Margot Wood told Ellis: “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.” She added: “I hate you with every fiber of my being.”¹⁸ Jared Wood said: “Now, all of our hearts will forever be missing a piece. It is up to all of us to keep his light shining.”¹⁹

Ellis offered a brief statement of her own: “I just want to say I apologize for what I did.”²⁰ Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael C. O’Malley called the case “among the most heartbreaking” acts of violence he had seen in his tenure and said Ellis’s actions “warrant nothing less than life without parole.”¹⁶

Ellis’s Appeal

Ellis has filed an appeal with the Cuyahoga County Court of Appeals challenging her conviction. Her appellate attorneys argue that Dr. Noffsinger evaluated her under the wrong legal standard. Under Ohio law, the question is whether a defendant was “able to know the wrongfulness of her actions.” The appeal contends that Dr. Noffsinger instead applied a more demanding test, asking whether Ellis had “an affirmative belief that her conduct was right,” and misstated the standard about 12 times during his testimony. Prosecutors, the appeal says, then reinforced the error in closing argument by telling jurors that a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity verdict would fail to hold Ellis accountable.²⁰

The appeal also raises an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim, arguing that Ellis’s trial attorneys failed to object to Dr. Noffsinger’s testimony or the prosecution’s related arguments. The brief states that “this jury was tricked, not only by a misunderstanding of the facts, but those facts need to be screened through the applicable law, not some made-up facsimile to weigh the scales in favor of conviction.” As of late April 2026, the state had not filed a response and no hearing date had been set.²⁰

Civil Lawsuit Against Giant Eagle

In October 2024, Margot and Jared Wood filed a civil lawsuit against Giant Eagle, two of its employees, the owners of the Water Tower Square Shopping Center, Volunteers of America, and Ellis herself. The suit alleges negligence, gross negligence, and recklessness, contending that Giant Eagle and the other defendants prioritized profits over safety and failed to properly monitor surveillance cameras. The family’s lawyers argue that employees watching the cameras would have seen Ellis openly carrying a large knife inside and around the store.²¹

Giant Eagle has denied liability and filed a third-party complaint seeking to spread any potential judgment among the other defendants. Volunteers of America has also denied liability and asked for the case to be dismissed.²¹ Court records show the civil trial is scheduled to begin on October 19, 2026.²²

Who Julian Wood Was

Julian Wood was three years old when he was killed. His family described him as a rambunctious boy with a wide smile who loved dinosaurs and school. He would have turned five on October 29, 2025, two days after Ellis was sentenced.¹⁹ At his funeral on June 8, 2024, hundreds of people lined the procession route from St. Charles Borromeo Church in Parma to Sunset Memorial Park in North Olmsted, wearing green and carrying toy dinosaurs at the family’s request, many holding signs reading “JuJu,” his nickname.²³ A memorial mural depicting a green dinosaur in the clouds, titled “His Favorite Color is Green and He Loves Dinosaurs,” was later painted on a building in North Olmsted’s Water Tower Square, near the site of the attack.²⁴

1
Court TV. OH v. Bionca Ellis: Toddler Stabbed Murder Trial
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Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office. Bionca Ellis Indicted for Stabbing 3-Year-Old and Mother at Giant Eagle
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Chronicle-Telegram. Woman Gets Life Without Parole for Murdering Boy, 3, at North Olmsted Giant Eagle
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ABC7 News. Giant Eagle Stabbing: Woman Allegedly Stabs 3-Year-Old
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Fox 8. Toddler Dies After Stabbing in Local Giant Eagle Parking Lot
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Cleveland 19. New Details About Woman Charged in Fatal Stabbing Outside North Olmsted Giant Eagle
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News 5 Cleveland. Records: Bionca Ellis Makes Claim About Killing Someone in California
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Cleveland 19. North Olmsted Tragedy: Police Release Video of Run-Ins With Suspect
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News 5 Cleveland. Jury Reaches Verdict in Bionca Ellis Trial
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News 5 Cleveland. Psychiatrists Disagree Whether Bionca Ellis Was Insane During Stabbing Death of Toddler
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Fox 8. Prosecution May Call Final Witness in Bionca Ellis Murder Trial
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Cleveland.com. Bionca Ellis Gets Life Without Parole for Murder of 3-Year-Old in North Olmsted
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News 5 Cleveland. Closing Arguments to Begin in Bionca Ellis Trial
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Cleveland.com. Rage or Insanity: Jury Weighs Motivation in North Olmsted Toddler Killing
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Court TV. Toddler Stabbed Murder Trial: Watch the Verdict
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Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office. Bionca Ellis Sentenced to Prison for Stabbing and Killing 3-Year-Old Julian Wood
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Fox 8. Bionca Ellis Appeals Life Sentence for Murder of 3-Year-Old
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WWNY TV. Parents Face Woman Convicted of Stabbing Child to Death
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Cleveland 19. Justice for Julian: Bionca Ellis to Be Sentenced for Killing 3-Year-Old at Giant Eagle
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Court TV. Bionca Ellis Claims Jury Was Misinformed and Tricked Into Guilty Verdict
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Cleveland 19. Justice for Julian Continues: Civil Lawsuit Works Through Courts One Year After Filing
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Cleveland 19. Trial Scheduled After Parents of Julian Wood Sue Giant Eagle, Volunteers of America
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Cleveland.com. Community Pays Respect to 3-Year-Old Julian Wood by Dressing in Green to Line Funeral Procession Route
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Cleveland.com. North Olmsted Unites to Create Memorial Mural in Honor of Julian Wood