Eddimar Paola Hernandez

Eddimar Paola Hernandez was a seven year old girl from Chicago's Chatham neighborhood whose life was cut short in a sudden and apparently random act of violence that shocked her South Side community and drew citywide attention. She was not a public figure in the usual sense: she had no career, no body of work, and no public record beyond her family and school life. She became known to the wider world only through the tragic and senseless manner of her death, and this page exists to record her life and the circumstances of her loss as accurately as the public record allows.

Family members said the girl and her relatives had recently emigrated from Venezuela's Nueva Esparta state. Relatives said Eddimar and her 16-year-old sister were in the area to pay a phone bill at the Boost Mobile store on the day of the attack, and at a vigil they remembered a happy young girl who loved to draw and play with her siblings and who waited by the window for her parents to come home.

On the morning of Saturday, October 3, 2026, Eddimar Paola Hernandez, 7, was killed in a Chicago stabbing on South Cottage Grove Avenue in Chatham, officials said. A 7-year-old girl was fatally stabbed while walking along a sidewalk on Chicago's South Side, police said, after a woman approached her and stabbed her multiple times in the back with a sharp object. Bystanders who witnessed the attack detained a woman suspected in the stabbing.

Chicago police said the attack appeared to be random and that Hernandez and Gayden did not know each other. The suspect, 48 year old Shavon Gayden, was charged with one felony count of first-degree murder. At the time the charges were announced, Shavon Gayden was still in the hospital, and she was due in court Monday after she was charged with murder in the stabbing of 7-year-old Eddimar Paola Hernandez.

The news of Eddimar's death prompted an outpouring of grief in Chatham. A vigil was held Sunday to honor 7-year-old Eddimar Paola Hernandez, a day after she was stabbed to death in Chicago's Chatham neighborhood. A prayer circle formed as family members and neighbors gathered to mourn, and white balloons were released into the sky in the young girl's memory. Mayor Brandon Johnson expressed condolences for the family and community impacted by the devastating loss.