A 5-year-old boy died Sunday after becoming ill at an overcrowded shelter in Pilsen that has been the subject of repeated complaints about unsanitary conditions.
Jean Carlos Martinez was transported from the shelter at Cermak Road and Halsted Street to Comer’s Children’s Hospital just before 3 p.m. Sunday, police said. He was pronounced dead at 3:47 p.m. An autopsy is scheduled for Monday.
Police said detectives were investigating. Migrant advocates say the boy died in a bathroom after staff refused to call an ambulance, but this could not be confirmed with police.
The shelter is a converted warehouse that opened in early October and has since become the most crowded shelter in the city, holding over 2,000 people.
It is run by Favorite Healthcare Staffing, a Kansas-based contractor the city has awarded tens of millions of dollars to run shelters since September 2022, shortly after the first buses carrying migrants began arriving.
The facility is one of several shelters that opened in the fall amid a crush of new arrivals and a push to move migrants from police stations.
By late November, it was holding more than 1,300 people. Another 1,000 migrants had been moved there by early December.
Migrants at the shelter quickly began sharing complaints with reporters and advocates, alleging it was overcrowded with many people sick and staff indifferent to the conditions.
Videos from inside the shelter shared with a reporter showed water leaking through the ceiling onto cots where migrants sleep as well as many children who were visibly sick. Conditions appeared similar to those at the O’Hare Airport shelter, first reported on by the Sun-Times in September.
Michael Loria is a staff reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South Side and West Side.
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