The alley behind the building where a woman was found near the 4900 block of North Kenmore Avenue in Uptown, Monday, Aug. 21, 2023.
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
The family of a 31-year-old woman who was critically injured after police said she was pushed out of a window in Uptown Saturday afternoon is asking the public for any information they can share on her fall, as she remains unresponsive.
Emergency crews found Jillian Schappa in an alley about 12:30 p.m. in the 4900 block of North Kenmore Avenue, Chicago police said. Reports indicate Schappa told first responders that she had been pushed out of a window, according to her mother Lori Schappa.
Schappa was taken in critical condition to St. Francis Hospital in Evanston, police said. She has been unconscious since arriving there, according to her mother.
Schappa is originally from Michigan but came to Chicago for college, as her two siblings had also done. She attended classes at Harold Washington for a year then transferred to Depaul University but began to struggle when classes were moved fully online, according to her mother.
“She has struggled with mental health for a very long time and has wanted to do everything by herself,” her mother said. “She’s a fiercely independent woman.”
Schappa had recently connected with Thresholds, an organization that provides health care, housing and other services to people with mental illness or substance issues. The organization helped place Schappa in a unit at the Kenmore Avenue building, where she lived alone.
According to her mother, everyone in the Kenmore Avenue building was moved there through some kind of public assistance program, though not necessarily Thresholds.
Schappa did not have many friends in the building, according to her mother but there was a man there who served as a sort of father figure to the 31-year-old. He told her mother he saw Schappa the morning of the tragedy and she seemed in high spirits. He was “totally shocked” by the news, her mother said.
A couple of days after the attack, the alley where Schappa was found was relatively quiet. A sheet could be seen being blown by the wind in place of where a window screen once was. A man smoking a cigarette sat on a stoop outside the building. The man, who lives on the third floor, said the woman is “a sweetheart.”
The family has not been given any details on the circumstances of the fall.
Schappa’s condition has been stabilized but as of Monday afternoon, she remained unresponsive, according to her mother. She was scheduled to undergo some testing Monday to help determine the next steps, her mother said.
“Everything is stabilized, she’s not under any sedation but she is in bad shape,” her mother said.
Her mother has asked anyone with information on what may have happened that day to come forward.
“If anyone is a friend that could maybe enlighten all of us we wish they would come forward,” her mother said.
Area 3 detectives are investigating and police said no one was in police custody.
