Good afternoon, Chicago. After his arrest for retail theft in Lansing in May 2022, Elijah Bell assumed his next stop, and in some ways preferred place, was jail. But he was offered a chance to try a special program offered in Cook County courts meant to divert those charged with low-level, nonviolent offenses from prison .
The new option was unfamiliar, and “I didn’t even want to take the opportunity to give it a chance,” he said. “It was never an option before, it was always jail,” Bell, 55, said of his previous arrests. “Jail was easy for me.
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Subscribe to more newsletters | Puzzles & Games | Daily horoscope | Asking Eric Mark Abrams cries during a vigil for his niece, Sierra Evans, in an alley near the 9500 block of South Avenue N on Oct. 2, 2024, in Chicago. Evans, 19, was found fatally shot at the location on the morning of Sept.
28. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune) Sierra Evans, 19, was found by a neighbor several hours after she was fatally shot in an alleyway Friday.
Her family and friends held a candlelight vigil there Wednesday evening. Read more here. More top news stories: CPD officer shot in Englewood neighborhood, according to Fire Department Building checked for structural damage overnight after sedan strikes a pillar on Michigan Avenue The developer of Iron Flats, a.