Chicago Shamed by Murder as Aurora Has Homicide-Free Year
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The murder of 18-year-old Abigail Villalpando, bludgeoned to death with a hammer last month in the Chicago suburb of Aurora, was distinctive less for its brutality than its rarity. It was the first homicide in Illinois’s second-largest city in 13 months.
Chicago is struggling to get control of a surge in homicides so dramatic that President Barack Obama is returning home tomorrow to speak a few miles from where a 15-year-old girl who attended his inauguration was fatally shot. The old manufacturing hub of Aurora reported no murders in 2012.