Chicago man charged in Woodlawn killing of Kiara Jenkins

Chicago police charged Eddie Jenkins, 45, of Brainerd, in the January killing of Kiara Jenkins, turning a five-month-old Woodlawn homicide into an active criminal case. Kiara Jenkins was 36 when officers found her in an alley in the 6400 block of South Drexel Avenue around 4:30 a.m. on Jan. 18, shot multiple times and pronounced dead at the scene. Until this week, the case had remained publicly unresolved.

Prosecutors charged Eddie Jenkins with first-degree murder. Court records and reporting also listed fleeing or attempting to elude a police officer, carrying a concealed firearm in a park facility, and no valid registration among the counts tied to the arrest. CBS Chicago identified him as a resident of Chicago’s Brainerd community and placed the arrest in Douglass Park on the West Side, while FOX 32 said he was due in court Wednesday. FOX 32 also placed the arrest on the 1400 block of South Sacramento Drive on the West Side.

The killing drew wider attention because Kiara Jenkins was on her way to Mt. Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church when she was shot, and multiple outlets described her as a mother of five. Church members and family spent months marking her death while police had not publicly laid out what led to the shooting or whether she knew the person now charged in her death. The public push for answers included a February reward offer of up to $10,000 from Cook County Crime Stoppers for information in the case.

A separate part of the public record also underscored why the body was not found immediately. Neighbors questioned why it took about 10 hours for police to locate her, and a 911 caller had reported hearing gunfire near the scene around 4:30 a.m., but the information was not specific enough for officers to find the alley right away. That delay became part of the case’s early mystery, even as the death was treated as a homicide from the start.

The arrest now shifts the Woodlawn case from a quiet investigation to the court process, where the evidence behind the charge can be tested in open proceedings. What happened in the alley on South Drexel is no longer just the subject of speculation; it is now the question a murder case has to answer.