Student’s life to be remembered as investigation into mysterious death continues

As family and friends continue to search for answers in the tragic death of Sincere Ash, the teen’s life will be celebrated Tuesday in Chicago.

A wake for Ash, who died August 5, will take place at 10 a.m. at Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 1252 S. Wolcott Avenue, with a funeral at 11 a.m. Per Ash’s family and friends, the funeral will be open casket. A memorial lunch is scheduled to follow the funeral at Moonlight Studios.

Meanwhile, officials continue to look into what happened to the 17-year-old Lane Tech College Prep student on August 5. Since there are no security cameras on the train platform at the Clybourn Metra station, where Ash’s body was found at 6:15 p.m. that day, police have been looking at other video.

Police are working to establish a timeline of how Ash got to the station, according to Metra spokesperson Meg Reile.

Reile noted that the station “wasn’t necessarily his most direct way home,” from when he left Lollapalooza last Sunday afternoon en route to his friend’s house in Logan Square. He was last seen at roughly 4:15 p.m. after being detained by police after a second failed attempt to sneak into the music festival.

Reile said Metra is trying to determine why he was up on that platform to begin with, although they haven’t gotten any new information since Friday.

“We’re still trying,” Reile said. “We may never have an answer on this but we are actively pursuing any information that [we] can get.”

Reile told the Sun-Times that toxicology results are not expected to be released for several weeks.

Police have been in frequent contact with his mother and family, Reile said.

Sun-Times file photo

On Sunday, August 12, eight family and friends of Ash gathered at the Clybourn station around to pass out flyers and look for Metra customers who were at the platform the same time the previous Sunday.

The group watched as an outbound Union Pacific North Metra train rolled into the station at roughly 5:43 p.m., which falls on the timeline of when Ash was supposedly at the platform. As the group was on the platform, two Metra detectives appeared briefly to make similar observations, while declining to make any comments to the Chicago Sun-Times.

“We’re still working hard,” one detective said to the group as they left the scene shortly after the outbound train left the platform.

Heather Brahos, a family friend of Ash who was at Clybourn on Sunday, said “we are still looking for answers … we just want to know how he got there.”