A 21-year-old woman was shot and killed in front of her two nieces after a masked man got into her car on Chicago’s Northwest Side on Oct. 31, police said.
Maria D. Coronel was in a parked car with her twin sister and two nieces, ages 1 and 2, going out trick-or-treating for Halloween.
According to Chicago police, at around 9:20 p.m. a masked man climbed into the backseat of the car and told them to drive away. The car had been parked in the 2200 block of North Long Avenue in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood.
Then, the man asked Coronel her cell phone, but she refused. That’s when he shot her and ran away. Coronel was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police said the car had traveled a few blocks east when the killer took off on foot in the 2300-block of North Lawler.
Her family said Coronel would have gone to a job interview on Nov. 1, ABC7 reported.
“She was a kind person,” Leticia Coronel, the victim’s sister told local reporters. “She never do [sic] anything to anybody ... lovely person.”
Relatives have set up an online fundraiser to cover funeral expenses, according to The Chicago Tribune.
Community activist Andrew Holmes has since sent a message to the killer, ABC7 reported. “To the perpetrator: you need to turn yourself in because I can guarantee you if your fingerprints are all over that car, save your mother and your father the headache and turn yourself in, because it will be a matter of time, especially if you’re in the system already.”
No suspects are in custody as of Nov. 2, as police review the evidence and continue the search for the killer.
