Just one witness could solve crime

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The murder of David Hresil from January, 2009 is still unsolved.

Updated: February 10, 2012 8:39AM

It was three years ago today that 18-year-old David Hresil stepped off a CTA bus on 59th Street on his way home from school — never to make it that far.

There was snow on the ground and more on the way, and David was bundled against the frigid cold in a Southpole jacket with his St. Rita High School uniform underneath.

The way his family envisions it, he had pulled up his hood with his earphones blasting music per usual as he walked south on Springfield Avenue, which might explain why he didn’t realize someone had come from behind with a gun.

There may have been 12 shots in all, the family was told, striking most every part of David’s torso and limbs. Only his head escaped the bullets.

“That’s the only part they’d let us touch at the hospital,” his big sister, Lauren Costantino, recalled last week from the living room of her mother-in-law’s Worth apartment.

David Hresil was pronounced dead at Mt. Sinai at 4:28 p.m., about an hour after he got off that bus. His murder has never been solved, and oddly enough, this is the first mention of David’s death in either of Chicago’s major newspapers.

It happens that way sometimes. In a city with so much violence, some of it goes unnoticed, its victims unrecognized.

David’s family, though, continues to hope for a break in the case, which is why they contacted me last week seeking some of that attention they never got at the time.

Police just need that one witness to come forward, maybe someone who was too afraid initially or who doesn’t realize their small piece of information could be important.

David Hresil (the “H” is silent) was not an honor roll student or an athlete, nor was he a gang member or troublemaker. As far as I can tell, he did not stand out in any way except that people liked him.

In short, he was just an average kid, which Father Thomas McCarthy, president at St. Rita, put in proper perspective for me.

“Yes, he was your good average kid. But that’s not a negative. Most of us are average,” Father Tom said. “People here were really affected when he was killed. It was just so senseless and sudden.”

David sounds like a lot of kids that age who haven’t quite found their path through life yet, but haven’t lost their way either.

He liked hanging out with his neighborhood friends from Peck Elementary School, listening to rap music, eating Palermo’s pizza and following the White Sox. Though slender of build, if you put a pumpkin pie in front of him, he’d eat the whole thing if you didn’t watch out. He avoided conflict — whether inside his family or out.

Each weekday, David took two buses to and from St. Rita, only missing a handful of days in four years. After school, he always came straight home alone to the house in the 3600 block of West 60th Place, where he lived with his father, George, a roofer. His first order of business was homework, then dinner and a shower before heading out — either to visit his girlfriend, his buddies or his mother, Monica, a salesperson in a plumbing supply store. The parents are divorced.

David would have graduated that spring, but hadn’t applied to any colleges. He was thinking about the Marines. Still, he had aspirations. “David used to say, ‘I’m going to do better than my sister. I’m going to live downtown. I’m going to have a bigger boat than [other family members],” his mom told me between tears and wistful flashbacks. And she believed he would make it happen some day.

David’s West Lawn neighborhood is the turf of competing Hispanic gangs. While investigators say David had no gang involvement, they believe his killer does.

Police believe a single gunman fired the shots that killed him, then fled north in a waiting vehicle. They also believe they have identified that vehicle as well as who was involved, but still need a witness.

That seems possible considering the shooting took place in daylight, right after school.

Monica Hresil says she always knew the city posed dangers to her son, but thought those dangers only came out at night, never envisioning a threat to him in the daylight.

David’s family will gather this afternoon at Mount Olivet Cemetery, 111th and California, for their annual vigil marking his death. By this time next year, they hope they’ll have some answers brought to light as well.