A young woman could be heard screaming “I love you” at her boyfriend moments before the 18-year-old man stabbed her to death early Tuesday morning, prosecutors told a judge.
At a detention hearing Thursday, Assistant State’s Attorney Mike Pekara said Alfredo Tzoy had been dating the woman, identified in court records as Whitney Jackson, also 18, for about seven months when Tzoy’s parents were awakened to the sound of fighting around 1 a.m. Tuesday in their Englewood home.
Tzoy’s father found the pair sitting on Tzoy’s bed, told them to quiet down and left them alone, according to prosecutors. Soon afterward, Tzoy’s father allegedly heard Jackson banging on Tzoy’s bedroom door and had to physically separate them before Jackson got her things and left the house on the 7200 block of South Emerald Avenue.
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Jackson appeared on surveillance footage with her backpack, a laptop and her blond wig, Pekara said.
Tzoy allegedly went after Jackson a few minutes later, activating both his parents’ doorbell app and a motion-triggered light. Jackson, holding a laptop, appeared briefly on a neighbor’s surveillance camera before walking out of the frame. Tzoy then appeared on the footage, running in the same direction Jackson had been headed, and both of them were seen running on a third surveillance camera in the alley behind Emerald Avenue.
The audio on the surveillance camera captured Jackson screaming “stop, Alfredo” and telling him “I love you.” The screaming then stopped, Pekara said, and Tzoy reappeared on surveillance footage walking back in the direction he’d come from.
A DoorDash driver making a delivery on 73rd Street saw Jackson covered in blood and holding her neck as she walked toward his car, Pekara said. She made it only a brief distance before she collapsed, with stab wounds under one ear and on her neck, shoulder and clavicle.
Englewood (7th) District police found Jackson’s laptop, wig and other belongings in the alley with a trail of blood that led to an abandoned house, where Tzoy was allegedly lying on the porch with a knife.
Officers briefly chased Tzoy down the alley, where he allegedly threw the knife as he tried to get away. They first took him to University of Chicago Hospital for a puncture wound he had on his left arm.
Tzoy later told officers that he had gotten drunk and hurt Jackson about six times over the course of their relationship, but did not remember the instances unless Jackson played audio of the abuse for him the following day. He said the purple and black knife found in the alley was his, and he identified himself in surveillance footage from his parents’ house, Pekara said.
As violent crime has declined in the years following the pandemic, domestic homicides were one of the few categories that were on the rise in 2025, sparking calls to action from law enforcement officials and advocates. This year, that number has dropped precipitously: between Jan. 1 and Sept. 22 of this year, the city logged 22 domestic homicide victims, per the city’s violence reduction dashboard. Last year, there were 44 such victims in the same period, data shows.
Judge Antara Nath Rivera ordered Tzoy held pending trial, court records show. He is next set to appear in court Oct. 14.