Lawrence Herron, 30, was found beaten to death inside a home in the 1200 block of West Lunt Avenue in the Rogers Park neighborhood on Chicago's North Side on the morning of Monday, December 24, 2018, Christmas Eve. He lived in Rogers Park. The Chicago Police Department investigated his death.
Officers responded to the home and found Herron unresponsive with blunt force trauma to the head, according to Chicago police and the Cook County medical examiner's office. He was pronounced dead at the scene at 6:41 a.m. An autopsy released on Christmas Day found that he died from head injuries he suffered in an assault, and the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.
Police said that afternoon that no one was in custody. They did not release a description of a suspect, say what he was struck with, say who called for help or say whether he knew the person who attacked him.
No arrest was announced, no reward tied to his case could be found, and no follow-up story about the investigation appears to have been published. The Sun-Times report was shared in a Rogers Park neighborhood news group on social media, where neighbors followed local crime.
Almost nothing about Lawrence Herron's life has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this account. The timing of his death stands out: he was killed in the early hours of Christmas Eve, and his family would have learned the cause of his death on Christmas Day. Other men named Lawrence Herron appear in Chicago news archives from other decades, which can make it harder to find any trace of the man who died in 2018.
Lunt Avenue in the 1200 block west runs through the eastern part of Rogers Park, the city's northernmost lakefront community, a dense area of apartment buildings and courtyard buildings close to Sheridan Road, the lake and Loyola University's lakeshore campus. Residents of a crowded block are often awake early, and someone who heard an argument overnight or saw someone leave the home before dawn may hold an important piece of the story.
Chicago recorded about 580 homicides in 2018 and about 500 in 2019. Chicago police reported clearing roughly half of the city's homicides in 2019 and the years that followed, though those figures count cases closed without charges. Stabbings and beatings drew far less attention than the shootings that dominated the city's headlines, and many of them were reported in a few lines and never mentioned again.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Lawrence Herron could be found in news archives or public records. More than 7 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was with Lawrence Herron on the night of December 23, 2018, who lived in or visited the home on West Lunt Avenue, or who heard talk afterward about what happened there 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).
