Vicky Braboy was 61 years old when she was stabbed to death on Friday, April 16, 2021, in the 100 block of West 111th Place in Roseland, on the city's Far South Side. The Chicago Police Department investigated her death, and the Chicago Sun-Times homicide tracker, which lists every homicide in the city, records it as a stabbing.
Beyond her name, her age, the cause of death and the block where it happened, almost nothing about Vicky Braboy has been made public.
The Sun-Times published a brief report on the stabbing the next day, but no fuller news story, obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this account. She surely had family, friends and neighbors who remember who she was, but none of that has entered the public record.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say whether she was attacked inside a home or on the street, what time of day it happened, whether she knew her attacker, whether she died at the scene or later at a hospital, or whether anyone else was hurt. It does not say whether investigators ever identified a suspect.
Her age and sex stand out. Most homicide victims in Chicago are young men, and a woman of 61 would likely have had children, grandchildren, neighbors or church friends who noticed at once when something was wrong. Braboy is also an uncommon surname, so someone who knew her would recognize the name immediately.
The 100 block of West 111th Place lies in Roseland, a Far South Side community of modest single-family homes and two-flats, just west of the Michigan Avenue commercial strip and close to State Street. On a residential block like that, neighbors often know one another by sight, and people who lived there in April 2021 may remember the police activity that followed her death.
Vicky Braboy was one of about 800 people killed in Chicago in 2021, the deadliest year in the city in a quarter century. Chicago police reported clearing roughly half of the city's homicides in those years, and that figure counts cases closed without anyone being charged. With so many killings to investigate, cases with few public details often faded from the news within days.
Cases like this can still be solved. In July 2021, Chicago police charged two people in the October 2020 stabbing of Sebastian Bobak in Humboldt Park, and a man in the November 2020 stabbing of Malcolm Mullins in Chatham, months after the first news reports had faded.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Vicky Braboy could be found in news archives or public records. More than 5 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew Vicky Braboy and saw her in the days before she died, or who heard talk afterward of what happened on West 111th Place, 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).
