Joseph Monge, 16, of Humboldt Park, was stabbed to death in the 3700 block of West Irving Park Road in Irving Park, on Chicago's Northwest Side, on the afternoon of Thursday, May 28, 2020. Area Five detectives of the Chicago Police Department investigated, and the Chicago Sun-Times homicide tracker, which lists every homicide in the city, records his death as a homicide by stabbing.
Police said that about 3:15 p.m., during what they described as a drug deal gone bad, the attacker grabbed a knife out of a backpack and stabbed the boy in the chest. An officer at the scene told Block Club Chicago that Monge and the attacker got into a fight, and that the attacker pulled out the knife, stabbed him and ran away. Monge walked until he collapsed in an alley just north of Byron Street, between Hamlin and Ridgeway avenues. He was taken to Illinois Masonic Medical Center in critical condition and was pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m.
No one else was reported hurt.
No one was taken into custody. By 4 p.m., more than a dozen officers were searching the alley, going through garbage cans and asking neighbors whether they had seen anyone run through the area, and drivers were turned away from the alley. Police did not release a description of the attacker or say whether the backpack or knife was recovered. No reward tied to his case appears in the public record.
Monge was 16 and lived in Humboldt Park. Little else about his life has been made public, but the people who knew him rallied after his death: a GoFundMe memorial fund set up in June 2020 drew 98 donations and raised $5,225, more than its $5,000 goal.
Irving Park Road is a busy commercial street on the Northwest Side, lined with shops and apartments, and the blocks around Hamlin and Ridgeway avenues just to the north are residential, with alleys behind homes and garages. On a Thursday afternoon in late spring, people on the street, in passing cars or in nearby yards may have seen the fight, the person running away or the injured teenager walking north toward Byron Street.
Chicago recorded about 780 homicides in 2020, one of its deadliest years in decades, and police reported clearing roughly half of homicides in that era, though that figure counts some cases closed without charges. Monge was killed three days after George Floyd's death in Minneapolis and just before the protests and unrest that swept Chicago at the end of May, when police resources were stretched thin.
Searches for his name are dominated by other people, including a professional baseball outfielder named Joseph Monge and a Los Angeles man charged in a 1993 apartment fire. Neither has anything to do with the Humboldt Park teenager.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Joseph Monge could be found in news archives or public records. More than 6 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Whoever was meeting him on Irving Park Road that afternoon, and anyone who saw someone running from the area near Hamlin Avenue and Byron Street, may be able to help. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a person seen running from 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).
