Double Murder On The Hill Unsolved, 1 Year Later

JOLIET, IL - Last New Year's Eve, a carload of Joliet-area young people decided to drive to The Hill. Then, about 11:40 p.m., a gunman opened fire on their car as the five parked on Rosalind Street at the notoriously dangerous Fairview Public Housing projects. Victor Arroyo, 15, and Aliyah Salazar, 17, were both fatally shot. A year later, nobody has been arrested in connection with the double murder.

In the aftermath of the killings, the Joliet Police Department got off to a slow start, though it appears that it was not the fault of the homicide investigators. Meanwhile, Joliet Police told Patch last week that they have developed a possible suspect, though it's uncertain whether murder charges are imminent in 2019.

The people in the 2017 Nissan Sentra who were not shot, including a 21-year-old Joliet man who was the driver, were initially reluctant to help Joliet Police solve the murders of their friends. The gunman may have fired as many as 10 bullets upon the car. Arroyo and Salazar were killed as they sat in the backseat. There were three males and two females in the car.

After the homicides, the three survivors tried telling Joliet Police detectives that they ended up on The Hill "because they had gotten lost," Patch has previously reported.

However, the Fairview Public Housing projects have been a notoriously dangerous place to go late at night for decades. Multiple people get murdered there practically every year.

In any event, it took several days before the surviving witnesses finally told Joliet homicide detectives a different version of events, to explain how they ended up on The Hill, according to Joliet Deputy Chief of Police Darrell Gavin.

Patch interviewed Gavin late last week to learn whether the double murder has been relegated to the Joliet Police Department's cold case files.

Gavin stressed that is not the case at all.

In fact, he said, Joliet Police have developed a person of interest in the double slayings. However, the possible murder suspect has retained criminal defense counsel which has made it difficult for the police to question him, Gavin explained.

At this point, Gavin declined to divulge a motive for the slayings.

"There are some details of the investigations that we would not want to release at this time," Gavin said.

"It's still active," Gavin said of The Hill double murder probe. "We're working hand in hand with the State's Attorney's Office in order to hopefully bring charges."

However, two factors slowed the speed of the initial double homicide investigation: the potential suspect's decision to retain a lawyer and the initial reluctance of the other people in the car that was sprayed with bullets to give police detectives an honest account of the events leading up to the deaths of Arroyo and Salazar on The Hill, Gavin noted.

The friends of the victims, "were initially uncooperative (and) the descriptions in their stories were not to be true," Gavin told Patch last week.

It took several days before the three others inside the car started being more forthright with the homicide detectives, Gavin said. As a result of their eventual cooperation, "we were able to develop a suspect after that," he said. However, time is of the essence in most homicide cases, and if a major homicide investigation gets off to a slow start, it's often hard to make up for lost time, Gavin conceded.

Patch asked Gavin whether the potential double murder suspect is currently in custody for other unrelated crimes, either in Will County or elsewhere.

"I'm not aware that he's locked up at this point in time," Gavin said.

On the other hand, it's quite possible that several people in the community, perhaps other residents of Fairview, or friends and acquaintances of the murder victims, may have information about the double murders that can still assist the Joliet Police at this stage, a year later, Gavin said.

He encouraged people who may helpful information to call the general number for the Joliet Police Department's investigations unit, 815-724-3020.

"If anybody happened to see or hear something, contact our investigations division," he said.

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Images of Victor Arroyo and Aliyah Salazar via Delgado Funeral Home obituaries.