The Latest Breaking News from Cook County

Four people are seeking custody of 7-year-old Estelle Schaefer, known as Stella, in the trial before Cook County Judge Stephanie Miller. Mack and her onetime boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, are charged in federal court with plotting the overseas murder of Mack’s mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack.

“Despite Jim Crow and the challenges that Black people faced, people who worked on the railroad had an opportunity to build a better life,” Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said during an event at the Pullman National Monument and State Historic Site.

The fatal attacks included a shooting early Sunday outside a bar in the Loop, and a man who was found with a gunshot wound in Old Town on the Near North Side.

Wait times are “appalling,” one board members says with a quarter of the jobs at the safety net health system open and staff morale low.

It’s a dangerous idea to take away someone’s presumed innocence, and with it their life as they know it, based on statistics.

Isaiah Collier, 35, of northwest Indiana, is charged with first-degree murder in the Aug. 22 shooting of Tyler Hawker, 26, Cook County prosecutors said.

As Chicagoans prepare to deliberate and consider who is to be their next choice for mayor, it is imperative that they consider how candidates are endorsed and if an endorsement from one organization actually represents that organization’s members.

Residents from the Ellis Lakeview Apartments are seeking financial compensation from a South Side building owner after having to live with mold, rodents and plumbing issues, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in Cook County.

Featured prominently in the 2019 Lifetime docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly,” Van Allen is now a key witness in an alleged early-2000s conspiracy to recover tapes of Kelly sexually abusing an underage girl and to rig his earlier 2008 child pornography trial in Cook County.

Today’s update is a 5-minute read that will brief you on the day’s biggest stories.

The retired child psychologist Chief Cook County Judge Timothy Evans named to head the committee that issued the report criticizes Evans for not moving swiftly to make changes.