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Harvey recorded the most homicides of any Cook County suburb last year, although that city saw a slight decline from its 2022 total, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Preliminary data from the medical examiner’s office show 13 homicides were recorded in Harvey last year compared with 15 in 2022, while Chicago Heights and Dolton each had a dozen homicides last year. Harvey had 31 homicides in 2021.
Eleven homicides were reported in Riverdale last year and six in Calumet City, according to information from the medical examiner’s office and tracked by the Daily Southtown.
By comparison, 11 homicides were reported in 2022 in Dolton, nine in Riverdale and seven in Chicago Heights, according to the medical examiner’s office.
There were four homicides reported last year in Country Club Hills and Markham, and three each in Calumet Park, Posen, Sauk Village and South Holland, according to the data.
Two homicides were reported in 2023 in Alsip, Burbank, Ford Heights, Homewood and Lansing, and one each in Blue Island, Burbank, Crestwood, Evergreen Park, Glenwood, Hazel Crest, Justice, Oak Forest, Oak Lawn, Park Forest, Phoenix, Robbins and Worth.
Of the 828 homicides countywide investigated last year by the medical examiner’s office, 729 were gun related and 651 occurred in Chicago, according to the medical examiner.
The office said 92 homicide victims were under the age of 18 in 2023, and 15 were younger than 10.
Overall, homicides in Cook County last year were down from the peak of 1,094 recorded in 2021 and lower than the 962 investigated by the office in 2022, the office reported.
Last year 76% of homicide victims in Cook County were African American, and males accounted for 84% of all homicide victims in the county last year, according to the office.
The youngest homicide victim locally in 2023 was a Park Forest girl, 5-year-old Jada Moore, who was alleged to have beaten over a period of time by her grandparents.
In July, Klent Elwoods and his wife, Lisa Jones, were ordered held without bond after being charged in the girl’s death, and prosecutors allege the pair began beating the child in their Park Forest home shortly after they began caring for her last March.
Prosecutors said they used a belt, shoe and their hands to beat the girl over a period of time, causing extensive injuries to her brain.
In some instances, arrests were made and charges filed shortly after the homicides, including one of five homicides recorded last year in Matteson.
Two Lansing residents — Jamaine Rush and India Williams — were charged with first-degree murder in the April shooting death of an 18-year-old Justice woman, Kyla Precious Ankum, in Matteson.
In one of three homicides recorded last year in South Holland a 16-year-old girl, Daysha Cazley, of Whiting, Indiana, was fatally shot in March at a hotel, and an Olympia Fields woman, Kennisha Laing, 21, was arrested and charged.
Daily Southtown
In the single homicide last year in Worth, two Harvey residents — Tamara Jailynn Johnson and Jason Terry Johnson — were ordered held in the Nov. 4 shooting death of single mother Jonnie Angel Klein, 31, of Oak Lawn.
The mother of a 14-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter, she was shot while using an ATM at a bank branch in Worth.
In some instances, months can pass between a homicide and arrests.
In November 2023, Calumet City police announced two men were charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death a year earlier of a security guard at River Oaks Center mall.
Norman Thomas, a 57-year-old U.S. Army veteran from Blue Island, was gunned down during the Nov. 16, 2022, armed robbery of a jewelry store at the mall. Frank Adkins and Maxx Walker are being held in the Cook County Jail on first-degree murder charges.
Messages left with police in Chicago Heights, Dolton and Harvey seeking information about 2023 homicides and any arrests and charges filed were not returned.
mnolan@tribpub.com