Hispanic/Latino male, 14-year-old Erick Alfaro, was walking through the Blackhawk Estates mobile home community in unincorporated Elk Grove Township near Des Plaines on the evening of May 4, 2022, when a dark-colored SUV rolled in along the 400 block of West Touhy Avenue.
It was around 7:15 p.m., daylight still hanging in the sky, and he was alongside another child when shots cracked from the vehicle.
The 14-year-old collapsed with a fatal wound to the head; the medical examiner later ruled he died of a gunshot, and deputies cordoned off the mobile home lanes where he lived, just steps from his front door.
By the next day, sheriff's investigators were walking the narrow streets and porches of the park, tracing the route of the SUV and collecting shell casings, seeking surveillance angles from nearby homes and businesses along Touhy.
Early accounts from authorities described the attack as a drive-by: a dark SUV pulled up, someone inside opened fire, and the vehicle sped off before anyone could catch a plate.
News outlets carried his name and the small, haunting details that fix a moment in time, where he fell, how close he was to home, how suddenly the quiet of a weekday evening had been broken.
In the months that followed, the picture of the 14-year-old grew from the terse lines of incident reports to the softer contours of an obituary. He was remembered by family and friends, a beloved son and brother, mourned at a memorial visitation in Wheeling.
The grief folded back into the neighborhood, but the case did not close; it lingered in the sheriff's cold-case files as detectives kept working tips and rechecking leads from that night on Touhy.
Two years later, in July 2024, the Cook County Sheriff's Office publicly renewed its plea for help, saying investigators were seeking two suspected gunmen believed to be responsible for the killing.
Authorities reiterated the essential facts, a 14-year-old ambushed by gunfire from a dark SUV inside Blackhawk Estates, and asked anyone with knowledge of the shooters, the vehicle, or its movements before or after the attack to come forward.
As of that update, no arrests had been announced, and the search for the suspects continued.
