Naperville man convicted of kicking wife to death

A Naperville man has been found guilty of kicking his wife to death in 2020.

DuPage County Judge Ann Celine O’Hallaren Walsh convicted Alan Wang of first-degree murder in the death of Hongyan Yang. Wang chose to have his case heard by the judge instead of a jury.

Yang, 35, died on March 8, 2020. Police officers and paramedics were called to the couple’s Naperville home by a relative at 4:50 p.m. for a report of a woman not breathing. They found Yang in a bedroom. She was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly thereafter.

Wang was initially charged with aggravated domestic battery. He was indicted on the murder charges in June 2020, after an autopsy determined that Yang died as a result of blunt force trauma due to assault. She sustained deep-tissue hemorrhaging, according to the autopsy.

Wang has been held on $1.25 million bail in the DuPage County jail since then because he did not post bond.

At the trial, which concluded Sept. 12, prosecutors said that on March 7, Wang had found texts from another man on his wife’s cellphone and that he then kicked her multiple times while they were in bed.

But a defense attorney argued that Wang had kicked her only to wake her up because he wanted answers, and did not know kicking her would create a strong probability of death or kill her. Another of his attorneys questioned Naperville firefighter/paramedics about whether a resuscitation device that does CPR had been used correctly.

Wang’s next court date is Nov. 12, for post-trial motions and receipt of a presentencing investigation report.