Police are asking for the public’s help locating a pregnant 19-year-old Chicago woman missing over a week and due to give birth on May 5.
She was last seen in the 2000 block of South California Avenue after leaving Latino Youth High School in Pilsen. Police say she may have been driving a black 2002 Honda Civic with the license plate AW27865.
“The family says surveillance video at the school shows Uriostegui walking off campus alone at 3:06 p.m. and appeared to be texting on her phone,” according to the MPCN.
Ochoa-Uriostegui is described as 5-foot-3, 125-pounds, with brown eyes, brown hair, and a light brown complexion, according to the MPCN.
She was last seen wearing a gray sweater and sweatpants along with a maroon top with the Latino Youth High School logo on it.
Family Pleads for Safe Return
The missing woman’s family held a news conference on May 2 pleading for her safe return.Her mother said the family believes she has been kidnapped. They say they have received ransom demands from Mexico.
Her husband and father of their three-year-old son said he believes he was the last one to speak to her on the day she disappeared, according to the report.
“This is going on too long. She is 19. She is a mother, she is due any day, she may have already had her baby. There’s so many unanswered questions,” said Julie Rooney, a school social worker, according to WGN-TV.
The family said she’s responsible and would not disappear of her own volition.
Crime in the United States
Violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply over the past 25 years, according to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).Both studies are based on data up to and including 2017, the most recent year for which complete figures are available.
While the overall rate of violent crime has seen a steady downward drop since its peak in the 1990s, there have been several upticks that bucked the trend.
Property Crime
The property crime rate fell by 50 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the FBI, and by 69 percent according to BJS.According to the FBI’s preliminary figures for the first half of 2018, property crime rates in the United States dropped by 7.2 percent compared to the same six-month period in 2017.
Public Perception About Crime
Despite falling long-term trends in both violent crime and property crime, opinion surveys repeatedly show Americans believe that crime is up.Perceptions differed on a national versus local level.