Sharon Grant, 54, died of injuries from an assault in Altgeld Gardens, in the Riverdale community area on Chicago's Far South Side. She was attacked about 2 a.m. on Friday, August 14, 2020, in the 13200 block of South Langley Avenue, and died 12 days later, on Wednesday, August 26, 2020. The Chicago Police Department investigated her death.
According to the Cook County medical examiner's office, she suffered multiple blunt force injuries in the assault.
She was pronounced dead at 11:25 p.m. on August 26 at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where she had been taken for treatment, and her death was ruled a homicide. When the Chicago Sun-Times reported her death, Chicago police could not immediately provide details on the incident. It is not known whether she was attacked indoors or outside, whether she knew her attacker, or whether anyone else was hurt.
No suspect description, motive, person of interest, public appeal or reward connected to her death could be found. The record does not say whether detectives ever identified anyone.
Beyond her name, her age and the circumstances recorded by the medical examiner, almost nothing about Sharon Grant has been made public. No obituary, funeral notice, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for her. She surely had family, friends and neighbors who remember her, especially in a close community like Altgeld Gardens, but none of that has entered the public record.
Sharon Grant is also a common name. Searches for it are dominated by other women who share it, including a former Chicago school board president and several professionals working in the city, and by a separate 2026 case involving a different woman with the same name. Those stories have nothing to do with the woman who died in 2020, and they make it harder to find any trace of her.
Her age and sex stand out. Most homicide victims in Chicago in 2020 were young men who were shot. A 54-year-old woman fatally beaten in the middle of the night is unusual, and the fact that she lived for nearly two weeks afterward means relatives and friends may have spoken with her or visited her in the hospital.
Altgeld Gardens is one of Chicago's oldest public housing developments, built in the 1940s at the far southern edge of the city and surrounded largely by industrial land. It is an isolated, close-knit community where many families have lived for generations, and residents of the 13200 block of South Langley Avenue may remember the police and ambulance response that night.
Chicago recorded about 780 homicides in 2020, up from about 500 the year before. Police reported clearing roughly half of the city's homicides in those years, though those figures count cases closed without charges.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Sharon Grant could be found in news archives or public records. More than 6 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who lived in Altgeld Gardens in August 2020 and saw or heard the assault, or who heard talk afterward of who hurt her, may be able to help. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a car seen leaving the area or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. Anyone with information can call the Chicago Police Department's anonymous tip line at (833) 408-0069 or submit a tip online at CPDTIP.com, or contact Cook County Crime Stoppers at (800) 535-STOP (7867).
