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Former first lady insisted ‘eight years is enough’ when asked if her husband would run again

A police officer opened fire in west suburban Aurora Wednesday afternoon, according to authorities.Few details were released about the shooting that happened around 1 p.m. in the 300 block of South Broadway. In a statement on social media, Aurora police urged people to avoid the area while officers investigated a "criminal matter.""We are on-scene with an officer-involved shooting. At this time there is no risk to the public. More details will be forthcoming," the department said in its statement.

As former Gangster Disciples boss Larry Hoover awaits a hearing this spring over his request for Gov. JB Pritzker to commute his life sentence for murder, influential Chicagoans disagree about whether he should go free.Late last year, Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke sent a letter to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board objecting to Hoover’s first request for executive clemency.In her Dec. 29 letter, Burke said Chicago’s neighborhoods continue to suffer from extreme violence tied to the Gangster Disciples, the massive street gang that Hoover famously ran from prison.“Both things can be and are true — that Chicago was ravaged by misguided public policies and disinvestment, and [Hoover] took advantage of the system’s failures and further ravaged Chicago’s neighborhoods due to his creation of the Gangster Disciples and the fostering of violence within the gang,” Burke wrote.The board is scheduled to hold a hearing on Hoover’s request in April. The board gives a recommendation to Pritzker, who makes the ultimate decision on clemency requests. The board typically takes about two months to forward a recommendation to the governor. A January hearing for Hoover was canceled.One of 75-year-old Hoover’s high-profile supporters is Arne Duncan, former President Barack Obama’s secretary of education. Duncan now runs Chicago CRED, an anti-violence organization.In 2023, Duncan sent the Prisoner Review Board a letter supporting Hoover’s separate request for parole, which was denied. The board can grant or deny parole without the governor’s formal input. Arne Duncan, founder of Chicago CRED, speaks at a meeting of violence-prevention groups at the Garfield Park fieldhouse in May 2022.Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Times In his letter, Duncan told the board he met Hoover’s wife and son and they long to be reunited.“They have also expressed to me that Larry Hoover would like to see the same thing I hope to see, a safer Chicago. If Larry Hoover is released from his prison sentence, he is more than welcome to help us at Chicago CRED to work to accomplish our mission in reducing gun violence in Chicago,” Duncan wrote.A spokesperson for Chicago CRED said Duncan now supports Hoover’s pending clemency petition. Other supporters include Chance the Rapper, Jesse Jackson Sr. and the Rev. Al Sharpton, according to his petition.In her letter to the parole board, Burke outlined the reasons she thinks Hoover doesn’t deserve clemency.She stressed that she doesn’t think Hoover accepts full responsibility for the 1973 killing of William “Pooky” Young.Hoover continues to refer to fellow gang member Andrew Howard as the “principal actor” in the shooting, but Hoover was the leader of their gang faction, Burke said. She said Hoover ordered the slaying because he thought Young, 19, was stealing from the gang’s Englewood drug stash houses.Hoover and Howard were both sentenced to 150-200 years in state prison for Young’s killing. They also were suspected in the fatal shooting of a man who cooperated with Chicago police in the investigation of Young’s murder.Howard was paroled in 1992, which Hoover’s lawyers say demonstrates the unfairness of the Illinois criminal justice system. Eileen O’Neill Burke after being sworn in as the Cook County State’s Attorney in December 2024.Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times Related No more parole recommendations, Foxx says, after heat for not opposing cop-killers’ bids for release Burke's objection to clemency for Hoover is a shift in how the Cook County state's attorney's office deals with prisoners' requests for freedom.In 2021, her predecessor, Kim Foxx, decided she would no longer offer opinions on parole to the Prisoner Review Board after she was criticized for not opposing the bids for release of two men convicted of killing Chicago police officers.Burke doesn't weigh in on every parole or clemency case her office is notified about. But she does file objections in some cases, such as a clemency petition for a convicted cop killer…

A teenage girl who was fatally shot Sunday in Austin was on a date with friends when a man she knows began arguing with her on the phone moments before the shooting, according to a police report.Melissa Castrejon, 17, was with three friends and a relative inside a Nissan SUV when she received a phone call from the man, leading to an argument between them, according to the report. Castrejon’s friend drove the group to the man's home in the 5200 block of West Bloomingdale Avenue and honked the car horn to get his attention, the police report says.They drove through an alley toward the 1800 block of North Latrobe Avenue, where the man and his friend were standing and allegedly opened fire on the car about 9:40 p.m., the police report says.The driver crashed into four parked cars and continued driving to Castrejon’s home about two miles away, where they realized that Castrejon, who was in a back passenger seat, had been shot in her back, according to the police report.She was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital and underwent surgery. Castrejon died the next morning, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.Video surveillance footage of the shooting showed two males — one wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, black pants and black shoes, and the other wearing a black sweater and blue jeans — fire shots at the Nissan SUV, the police report says.They then ran to a nearby parked car and placed something in the trunk, and sprinted to a home on Bloomingdale Avenue, according to the report, which added the parked car they had gone to was later towed and held for the investigation.A Chicago police spokesperson said Wednesday that no arrests have been made in the shooting and that the investigation is ongoing.A fundraiser started by Castrejon’s family had raised more than $5,500 as of Wednesday afternoon.“She had a whole life ahead of her,” Castrejon’s brother, Daniel, wrote. “She was young, full of life with intentions of going far in life and someone took that from her leaving her family [and] myself in disbelief and broken in ways you can’t imagine.”Cook County Crime Stoppers is offering a $10,000 reward to anyone who can provide information that leads to the arrest of anyone responsible for the shooting.“This was a senseless act of violence that took the life of a young person far too soon,” Cook County Crime Stoppers Executive Director Paul Rutherford said in a statement. “Someone out there knows who is responsible. We are urging anyone with information, no matter how small it may seem, to come forward anonymously and help bring justice to Melissa and her family, Rutherford said in the statement.Anonymous tips can be submitted to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-535-7867, and to Chicago police at cpdtip.com.