CHICAGO, IL – The ever-increasing crime and violence in Chicago continue to claim victims as a Christmas tragedy unfolded over the weekend, when a daughter who was helping her father hand up holiday decorations was instead forced to watch him beaten to death in a senseless attack.
The attack happened about 6:30 p.m. Saturday in the 3500 block of West 58th Street, when Jose Tellez – an immigrant who had reportedly come to America to better provide for his family – was attacked by two unidentified individuals while hanging up Christmas lights with his daughter.
A neighbor, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that she heard Tellez’s daughter scream, rushed to the scene of the attack, where she discovered the victim lying on the ground, bleeding profusely from the head.
“My dad, my dad, he’s hurt,” the neighbor said. “I told [the daughter] to get a blanket to put on his head. There was a lot of blood.”
Tellez, who was married with three children, was rushed to Christ Medical Center, where he died at 10:32 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Chicago police have not yet released descriptions of the two assailants, stating only that they were identified as two males; a motive for the attack is currently unknown, but the victim was reportedly not robbed, and had been beaten with blunt objects.
The anonymous neighbor who responded to the attack stated that Tellez “was a good man who mostly kept to himself,” and that she “couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt him.”
Another neighbor, Silverio Nodal, said that he had known Tellez for a decade and said that he was an avid gardener who worked as a landscaper, and was “a family man, a hard-working guy.”
“He came here to provide the best for his family, you know as all of us do, the American dream,” Nodal said. “But this is not the American dream.”
A GoFundMe page has been established to assist the Tellez family with funeral expenses; to date, it has raised over $46,000, far exceeding its original $10,000 goal.