Just after midnight on May 12, 2023, officers in Chicago’s West Englewood saw a small fire climbing the side of a house on the 6400 block of South Damen Avenue. Inside, they found 32 year old Raquel A. Adams with a gunshot wound to the back of her head. She was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead; investigators deemed the fire suspicious and later concluded open flames had been set in four distinct areas of the house.

Family described Adams as a devoted mother of five who had recently earned her GED and was planning to open a full-service beauty salon in Little Village. The night before she was killed she took her children, ages 2 to 15, to relatives and returned to the home she shared with her fiancé. Prosecutors say Adams had recently ended the relationship and told 37 year old Joshua Mims to move out; surveillance footage allegedly shows him leaving the home around 10 p.m., returning shortly after midnight, then departing again within minutes.

On November 12, 2024, Chicago police and the U.S. Marshals Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force arrested Mims and charged him with first-degree murder and aggravated arson, alleging he shot Adams and intentionally set the residence on fire. He was ordered held pending trial. Did anyone in West Englewood know Raquel or have information about that night?