Antoinette Congo, 36, a Black woman from Chicago, was discovered shortly after midnight on September 11, 2025, after firefighters extinguished a garage blaze in the 6500 block of South Damen Avenue in Englewood. Responders found her unresponsive on the alley apron outside the garage; an autopsy determined she had been shot multiple times—wounds to her left side, back, and the back of her head—and investigators concluded an accelerant was used to start the fire, with the point of origin at
her body. Her killing was ruled a homicide and added to the city’s grim tally of gun deaths. Friends and memorial pages marked the date and circumstance of her death, underscoring the shock and cruelty of the attack.
Within days, Chicago police arrested 65-year-old Gregory W. Hudson, a Roseland man whom prosecutors said Congo had known for about a year. He was charged with first-degree murder, concealment of a homicidal death, arson, aggravated armed kidnapping, and aggravated criminal sexual assault with a firearm. Prosecutors alleged that, two days before his arrest, Hudson lured Congo and a 27-year-old woman to his apartment; the surviving woman told authorities she heard gunshots, then saw Congo wounded, and later reported being sexually assaulted under threat. Surveillance and witness accounts placed a white work van with a ladder near the garage around the time of the fire, and a 911 caller reported the blaze; Hudson was taken into custody later that day and ordered held. Coverage by local outlets and gun-violence trackers tied the charged case to Congo’s name and the Englewood scene.
