Mothers never expect to bury their children. Rachael Parker, a steadfast public servant in Peoria, Illinois, found that the 2020 shooting death of her son, Ryan, made her feel helpless. Just one year earlier, after nearly a decade on the county board, Parker had been appointed county clerk, a role she still occupies. Every day for years, she has helped maintain public filings, track land records, and issue various licenses. Every day, she works alongside those who would be responsible for prosecuting the crime that claimed her son’s life.
“Nobody’s working on Ryan’s case,” Parker said. “Ryan’s case is just sitting on a shelf.”
Ryan Greenwood was among 43 gunshot victims in Peoria since 2020 whose killers haven’t faced justice. According to police data, the rate of unsolved murders is nearly 53 percent, which is just below the national homicide clearance rate of 58 percent. In a city with a population of just over 110,000 — in which 88 percent of all gunshot homicide victims in the last five years have been Black — unsolved killings leave surviving family members and entire neighborhoods to carry the burden of interpersonal violence, grief, and impunity.
The unsolved cases also sow deep distrust between locals and the law enforcement officers meant to protect and serve them.
Local prosecutors, Parker said, “want those [suspects] to stay out there to get rid of more of us.” Like many residents and activists, she believes that the authorities don’t pursue justice because most of the victims are Black. The disproportionate impact of the killings on their communities is made worse, many say, by the lack of urgency and communication from State’s Attorney Jodi Hoos, who was elected to her first term in 2020.
“When she first got elected, she talked about working with survivors,” local activist Yolanda Wallace said. “But nothing’s been put into play.”
Greenwood’s case had been stalled for several years when, in February 2024, the police told his mother that they’d gathered enough evidence to arrest a suspect in the shooting. But then Hoos said the evidence was insufficient and refused to pursue charges.
“It crushed me,” Parker recalled. The case is still with the State’s Attorney’s Office, which did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
Terry Burnside, who runs a local violence prevention program in the city, said this failure to prosecute puts loved ones on edge and goes beyond a single family. “When you have a situation that’s unresolved and people in the community know what happened, now you have retaliation. You got family members that are not active in the streets, but they didn’t get any closure, so they’re the ones that want to take matters into their own hands and get a gun.”
More than personal
Yolanda Wallace, who’s lived in Peoria her whole life, knows firsthand the despair that comes from a child’s murder. After her son was killed in 2006, she received such little support that she decided to fill the gap herself. She leads a support group for mothers of kids whose killings remain unsolved. “The survivors who are left behind, they’re basically forgotten,” said Wallace, who also organizes residents to tape up “missing persons” posters of victims around the city.
During her 2024 reelection campaign, Hoos claimed that her office convicted 44 murderers, filed 2,500 gun charges, and prosecuted 100 shootings during her first four-year term. “Those are big numbers. Big numbers. And we’re going to continue to do that,” she said at the time. “The only way our community can continue to move forward is if our violent offenders are being held accountable.”
But according to police data, since 2020 the city has averaged around 122 nonfatal and fatal shooting incidents per year. Hoos prosecuted roughly 20 annually. Of 116 total homicides between 2020 and 2024, 98 were by firearm, and Hoos won an average of nine homicide convictions a year. At least 57 of those 98 firearm homicides are considered “closed” by the police, meaning they arrested a suspect or they have no more leads. (A closed case does not necessarily mean that a suspect was charged or convicted in court.)
Surviving family members and local activists said this situation is far from adequate. The police, they say, have repeatedly told them they’ve given the State’s Attorney’s Office “what they need and they still don’t pursue it,” Burnside said. A detective with the Peoria Police Department who requested anonymity said investigators had been “perplexed by some of the murder cases our State’s Attorney’s Office declined to bring charges against.”
Melissa Chavez considers her son’s case one of those. In February 2019, Chavez’s 30-year-old son, Michael Shipley, was fatally shot during a home robbery. Years passed before his mother heard from police that they had evidence the suspects had stolen clothes from Shipley’s house and were ready to arrest several people. But Hoos didn’t think it was enough to go on. “The detective said he presented everything to the state’s attorney last summer and that they’d be reaching out to me. They never did,” Chavez said. “I’ve been calling every week, and they’re just ghosting me now.”
Though it’s common for prosecutors and police officers to have conflicting views on how or whether to proceed with a case, the increasing public tension in Peoria is notable. And that tension can create more community mistrust that perpetuates violence, some residents say. “You don’t want the Police Department to be talking to the family behind the [prosecutor’s] back and telling the family, ‘We’re ready to go forward here but the [prosecutor] won’t do it,” said John Flynn, the former district attorney of Erie County, New York, which includes Buffalo. “That’s the last thing you want happening. It’s important for the state’s attorney to be involved and explain things to the family.”
Beth McCann, another former district attorney based in Denver, said she imposed a rule on herself when she declined to pursue homicide charges against someone who the police believed was responsible: Always offer family members a chance to speak with her. “My philosophy was that I’m making a decision that is dramatically affecting a family,” McCann said. “They are hard and difficult discussions, but you owe it to the family to be transparent.”
In Peoria, Wallace said, that kind of communication is not happening. “No mother who has an unsolved murder would ever be able to talk to our state’s attorney.”
Four years later, Chavez still hasn’t. “They have a lot of cases, but I think maybe they’re losing the fact that these cases represent loved ones for the family,” Chavez said. “They just see criminals and not someone’s son or father.”
Lack of closure
It was June 3, 2020, when 30-year-old Ryan Greenwood, Parker’s son, went by himself to a house party on Peoria’s South Side. It was unusual for him to go places alone, his mother said. “Even more crazy is that he left by himself. They always leave in groups.”
Just before 11:30 pm, Greenwood walked to his car, set down a plate of food, and went to talk to a friend in another car. He stood with his back to the street. A car drove past them, then returned, and someone inside fired multiple shots. His friend crawled to the back seat as Greenwood took bullets across his chest and legs — he died right there. The killing baffled his mom. Aside from a single arrest in Colorado for drug possession, Greenwood had no criminal record, though Parker had been concerned that he might be associating with the wrong people.
“Some people say ‘you don’t even really know your son. You don’t know what he was doing,’” Parker said. “Well, maybe not, but I know for a fact that whoever did that didn’t have the right to take his life.”
When detectives began the investigation, Parker, 65, patiently waited for answers. She clung to memories of her son as a kid; he loved dressing up as a superhero and discovered a passion for basketball, which he stayed connected to through coaching. Once the case was in the hands of the State’s Attorney’s Office and Parker stopped getting updates, she took matters into her own hands and hounded Hoos for answers, repeatedly calling her office and asking to speak.
Though the two work just down the hall from each other, it took Parker almost a year to discuss her son’s case with Hoos; aside from the quarterly lunch that all the elected officials attend, Parker doesn’t see her regularly. “[Hoos] made it sound like she was going above and beyond by allowing me to speak with her, because typically she doesn’t do that,” Parker said about one of their conversations regarding Greenwood’s killing.
Parker has stopped keeping track of all the unanswered calls she has made to Hoos. Yet she feels a responsibility to the other mothers she’s connected with and hopes to set up a meeting with some of those family members soon to give them a chance to share their feelings with Hoos.
Eric Echevarria, the city’s police chief, has been more open with residents, several sources said. He attends community events, talks with families as much as he can, and has made considerable efforts to improve community policing strategies since he took the role in 2021. According to the latest police report, shooting incidents are down 38 percent in 2025 compared to the same period last year, and the number of shooting victims decreased by 44 percent. As of March 13, eight people have been shot, two of whom were killed. All of the victims have been Black.
