Abylbek Yzabekov was a 31-year-old Asian male pizza delivery driver living on the Northwest Side of Chicago when his final late-night shift took a tragic turn in November 2014. He had gone out after midnight to deliver an order to the Pavilion apartment complex in the 5400 block of North East River Road, a large residential complex near O'Hare International Airport, while his roommate and close friend waited in their car outside for him to return.
Around 12:20 to 12:24 a.m., after dropping off the pizza, Yzabekov walked back toward the car through the parking area of the complex. Two men approached as he neared the vehicle, one of them carrying a handgun. According to police accounts later summarized in the press, the pair announced a robbery and confronted him beside the car where his friend was waiting. In the confusion of those few seconds, as he tried to get away, the armed man opened fire, striking him in the head. The assailants then ran off into the night without taking any money or other property, leaving his friend physically unharmed but forced to witness the aftermath of the attack.
Emergency crews rushed Yzabekov from the Pavilion complex to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge. Initial updates described his condition as critical as doctors worked through the day to save him. By late Tuesday afternoon, however, the effort failed: he was pronounced dead at 4:22 p.m., and the case was formally classified as a homicide. Reports noted the cruel detail that he lived on the same block where he was shot, that he had only recently begun working for the small pizzeria, and that he was nearing the end of his shift when the call for the fatal delivery came in, all while some of his family remained overseas and would learn of his death from far away.
Residents of the Pavilion recalled being jolted awake by the sound of multiple sharp cracks echoing around the buildings in the early-morning darkness. Some later said they were surprised to realize those noises had been gunshots, believing the insulated high-rise towers would keep the outside world at bay. The vast complex, which employed 24-hour security and had recently added surveillance cameras, quickly turned into a sprawling crime scene under bright floodlights as detectives, patrol officers, and evidence technicians moved through the parking lots and walkways, searching for shell casings, video footage, and any witness who might have glimpsed the fleeing figures.
Investigators announced that they were looking for the two men involved in the attempted robbery, but they did not release detailed descriptions, and early coverage stressed that the gunman and his accomplice had escaped on foot without cash or valuables. News stories in the days that followed noted that no one was in custody, and later public summaries of the case simply restate the circumstances of the shooting without mentioning any arrests or named suspects, indicating that no resolution has been publicly reported. Yzabekov's name appears on lists of Chicago homicide victims for the period of November 6–10, 2014, and on online memorial pages where candles can be lit in his honor, brief messages posted, and his photograph shared, ensuring that even as his killers remain unaccounted for in the public record, the memory of the quiet delivery driver whose routine run ended in violence is preserved.
