China Velma Mitchell, 33, was fatally shot on January 15, 2024, during a domestic dispute at an EZPAWN on the 4800 block of South Ashland Avenue in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood. She suffered gunshot wounds to the head and chest and died after being taken to the University of Chicago Hospital.

The alleged shooter, 32-year-old Louie Foster, was arrested shortly after the incident and charged with two felony counts of murder and one count of being an armed habitual criminal. Mitchell had obtained an Emergency Order of Protection against Foster in October 2022 and asked a judge for a seizure warrant to remove Foster’s firearms, but the judge did not grant the warrant and the seizure was not addressed at that hearing.

Mitchell was a mother of three and worked as a security guard along a Chicago Transit Authority rail line. Friends called her the diva for her style and remembered her as kind and helpful. Her parents have taken on raising her children. What information might help clarify how the firearms issue in the protection order was handled before the shooting?