Residents of Little Village, a neighborhood on Chicago’s southwest side, are urging the police to take action following the mysterious deaths of two women and the disappearance of a 15-year-old girl.
The Little Village Community Council highlighted these incidents during a press conference held on Wednesday outside the Chicago Police Department’s detective division headquarters.
Azreya Lomeli, the missing teenager, has been unaccounted for over a week. She was last spotted walking on the south side of the city after leaving a behavioral health hospital, as reported by ABC 7 Chicago. Lomeli’s disappearance occurred just days after two women’s bodies were found in the area.
Last week, 21-year-old Rosa Chacon’s body was discovered, wrapped in a white sheet and placed inside a shopping cart in a Little Village alley.
Chacon was reported missing on January 18, prompting her family to hire a private investigator due to frustration with the police response. During the press conference, Chacon’s sister, Elizabeth Bello, demanded justice and answers, stressing that her sister deserved to be treated as a human being, regardless of her past.
In late January, 20-year-old Reina Cristina Ical was found dead in an alley on South Drake Avenue. She had been shot, according to the police. Ical had only been in the United States for four months when she was killed. Baltazar Enriquez, president of the Little Village Community Council, lamented the violence that immigrants like Ical face when they come to Chicago, seeking refuge from their home countries’ turmoil.
Enriquez emphasized the community’s demand for the same level of attention from the police that would be expected in the city’s wealthier neighborhoods. He called for a similar response to these cases as if they had occurred in areas like Lakeview, Wrigleyville, or the Gold Coast.
A spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department has not yet provided additional information or updates on the ongoing investigations.