Hundreds of family, friends and supporters filed through a southwest suburban funeral home Thursday to pay respects to Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, the pregnant 19-year-old who was killed in a gruesome plot last month.
The first of two days of visitation was held at Mount Auburn Funeral Home in Stickney, with another planned for Friday before the funeral on Saturday.
A few dozen mourners streamed through the funeral home at a time, greeting Ochoa-Lopez’s family. Spanish-language music played as family and friends filled five rows of seats.
The expectant mother’s husband, Yovani Lopez, wore a silver suit as he hugged supporters in front of his wife’s white casket. Arnulfo Ochoa, the father of Ochoa-Lopez, also greeted those who gathered inside.
Multicolored, heart-shaped flower arrangements and poster boards with photo collages lined the edges of the room, with an enlarged photo of Ochoa-Lopez in her wedding dress displayed next to her casket.
Memorial cards handed out as mourners walked out of the funeral home showed various photos of Ochoa-Lopez and included a prayer in Spanish that said, “Todo lo puedo en Cristo que me fortalece,” meaning “I can do everything in Christ who strengthens me.”
Nine months pregnant with her second child, Marlen Ochoa-Lopez went to Clarisa Figueroa’s home last month to buy baby clothes, just as she had done at least once before, authorities said.
But during the visit, police said the 19-year-old Ochoa-Lopez had been strangled and her baby had been cut out of her womb in a grisly crime that took authorities three more weeks to uncover.
Police announced murder charges against Figueroa, 46, and her 24-year-old daughter, Desiree Figueroa, earlier this month. Clarisa Figueroa’s boyfriend, 40-year-old Piotr Bobak, was also charged with concealing a homicidal death, police said. All three defendants are scheduled to return to court June 3.
Sara Walker, one of the student pastors at Lincoln United Methodist Church who has been helping the family communicate with police, described the recent events as “very emotional, incredibly sad and tragic.
“I haven’t personally been able to really process it or understand it,” Walker said. “I don’t know if anybody will ever fully understand why these people did what they did.”
She said the really hard work is going to come when everybody goes home and they have to go back to their day to day life and process it, heal from the trauma and raise little Joshua.
“It’s a big family, a big beautiful family,” Walker said. “Obviously they have a lot of love for each other, and that’s what going to sustain them going forward.”