Somali male, 54, Ismail Abdulle was working the late shift as a Chicago cab driver when Christmas Eve blurred into dawn. Hours after reporting a robbery in the city, he was found dead inside his vehicle in Blue Island, Illinois, near Davis Street and Irving Avenue around 6 a.m. The Cook County medical examiner ruled the death a homicide caused by multiple injuries from an assault, and Blue Island police opened a murder investigation.
According to investigators and prosecutors, a passenger later identified as 26 year old Francisco Ojeda had called for a pre dawn ride to the LaSalle Street Metra station and was picked up on Fullerton Avenue. When payment became an issue, Abdulle, 54 years old and male, told a fellow driver by phone that his rider was having trouble with a credit card and was “taking over” the cab.
Prosecutors said the confrontation turned brutal: Ojeda allegedly struck Abdulle in the head with a whiskey bottle, then drove the cab south to Blue Island and tried to set both the car and the driver on fire before abandoning them at Davis and Irving. Relatives later described severe trauma to Abdulle's face and head; authorities recovered the victim's wallet and, from Ojeda's home, bloody clothing.
Blue Island detectives, working with the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force, arrested Ojeda on December 26, 2017. He was charged with first degree murder, denied bail, and scheduled for a subsequent court date, with officials publicly identifying him as the person accused in the killing of the 54 year old cab driver.
As the case moved into the courts, mourners filled the Muslim Community Center on Chicago's Northwest Side for Abdulle's funeral. Family and friends remembered the 54 year old driver as a gentle presence in the city's Somali community, a husband and father of five who had lived in Chicago for a decade and often offered discounted rides to those in need. A fundraising campaign was launched to help his family.
Contemporaneous reports named only Ojeda as the suspect and did not announce additional arrests tied to the Christmas Eve killing in Blue Island.
