Elgin mom: My slain son who was in a gang still deserves justice
For two weeks after her son's murder, Ramona Ramirez sat alone each night at Festival Park in Elgin.
She felt at peace, she said, being there at 2:30 a.m. while sitting on steps facing the Fox River - the same time and place where her son, 20-year-old Daniel Figueroa, was shot and killed April 18.
"I felt he was with me," Ramirez said. "I would just go and feel like I would see him, or like he'd tell me something."
She stopped visiting the park only when her family took her car keys away, she said.
"I feel empty," she said. "I'm still waiting for him to come home."
Figueroa was at Festival Park with two other people - a man and a woman who were unhurt - when he was gunned down, Ramirez said. Her family is offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of his killer.
"I'd hate for another mother to go through this pain, because if it didn't hurt (the killer) to kill my son, he's going to easily take someone else's life," his mother said. "And I would at least feel he got some justice."
Ramirez makes no qualms about her son's poor choices - he got involved in a gang as a teenager and didn't heed his mother's pleas to leave that behind, she said.
But Figueroa, whose nickname was "Junior," was also a caring son who comforted her when she lost her job and told her he'd always take care of her in her old age, his mother recalled. He was close to his older sister and a good big brother to his two younger siblings, she said.
"People say, 'Oh, he was just a gang member,'" Ramirez said tearfully. "But he was somebody's brother, he was somebody's grandson. He wasn't just a gang member. To me, he was my son."
Figueroa's is among three unsolved murders this year in Elgin, along with Devonte Turner, 20, who was killed April 30, and Rueben Duncan, 31, who was found dead June 14. Police said the three killings don't appear to be related.
Lt. Rick Ciganek, who leads Elgin's investigations division, said police have no motive and no suspects in Figueroa's death. "There are still leads we are pursuing. Hopefully they will turn something up," he said.
Figueroa, who grew up in Melrose Park, played for the Leyden Bears youth football program and used to say he wanted to become a police officer or a firefighter, his mother recalled.
He liked to play video games and ride a dirt bike, and for a while enjoyed riding horses, a hobby he was introduced to by his stepfather.
After the family moved to Elgin, he attended Larkin High School but dropped out in the 10th grade, his mother said.
Ramirez isn't sure how or why Figueroa became a gang member, but she knew what was happening when he got a gang tattoo, she said. "That's not the path that I wanted him to choose," she said. "I tried to talk to him. I tried everything to get him out of that path."
Figueroa was arrested and charged with battery and resisting/obstructing arrest in 2012, and was arrested on a Kane County warrant in 2014, Elgin police said. Kane County records show Figueroa was ticketed in 2013 by the Illinois State Police for failure to wear a seat belt.
Figueroa moved in with friends about three years ago, saying he didn't want his gang lifestyle to affect his family, his mother said.
At one point about 1½ years ago, he decided he wanted to get away from Elgin and moved to Northlake, she said.
He got a job and a car, and did well for a while, "but he ended up coming back and got into trouble again," she said.
Just before his death, Figueroa asked his mother to rent him a hotel room to get away once more, she said.
Mother and son were always close, but that started changing lately, Ramirez said. "I'm not sure what he was getting into, but he wouldn't come around as often," she said. "I was worried, but he wouldn't tell me what was going on."