It began in north suburban Waukegan on Sunday morning, when a suicidal man confessed to police that he’d “harmed his family.”
Soon police cars raced through Chicago’s Dunning neighborhood until they reached a home in the 3400 block of North Odell.
Inside, they found a dead woman and child about 9 a.m., according to Officer Jose Estrada, a Chicago Police spokesman.
After he was taken into custody, the man told police he had harmed his family.
Authorities released few details about the shocking crime Sunday.
But a friend of the man said he arrived at his mother’s Waukegan home Sunday morning with the couple’s 5-year-old daughter, Gabriela. The friend, who asked that her name not be published, identified Anna Kosinska as the man’s live-in girlfriend and said the couple also had a 7-year-old daughter, Victoria.
Chicago Police investigators carry out a large white bag from a house in the 3400 block of North Odell, where the bodies of a woman and a young girl were found on Sunday. | Al Podgorski/Sun-Times Media
It’s not clear what prompted the violence that lured swarms of police and reporters to the family’s neighborhood on Chicago’s Northwest Side. But by all accounts, the Polish couple living there fought often.
Maggie Witucki, who lives nearby, said neighbors would sometimes be forced to call police when the squabbling spilled outside. She said the bickering never turned violent, though.
“Nothing physical that I saw,” said another neighbor, Patti Schoessow. “Just, you know, words.”
Schoessow said the family’s sheepdog ran across the street into Schoessow’s yard about 7 p.m. Saturday. Once the couple got the dog back on a leash, they took a stroll — with their two girls riding beside them in a pink motorized toy car.
“And like a family, they went walking around the block,” Schoessow said.
Another family friend wouldn’t give her name, but she described the mother of those two girls as a “warm,” “helpful” and “lovely person.”
But the other friend said the father spoke a month ago about taking custody of the children, claiming their mother had harmed them. The couple had an on-again, off-again relationship, the friend said.
A third family friend said she didn’t know what to think.
She said she simply felt “really, really sad.”
“They were a loving family,” she said. “They had their ups and downs. Every family does.
Chicago police carry out evidence bags as the coroner’s van removes one of the two bodies from a house in the 3400 block of North Odell, where the bodies of a woman and a young girl were found on Sunday. | Al Podgorski/Sun-Times Media
