Mourners lined up at a south suburban funeral home Thursday afternoon to pay their last respects to Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, a young expectant mother who was strangled and her baby cut from her.
As Christian music played in Spanish in the background, mourners quietly streamed in and out of Stickney’s Mount Auburn Funeral Home, about 35 at a time.
Individual flower arrangements of red roses, sunflowers and white blossoms adorned the closed casket.
An enlarged photo of a smiling Ochoa-Lopez on her wedding day, wearing white and holding a bouquet of white flowers as she sat inside a car, was set in front of the casket.
Close family members sat in a row behind the coffin and individually stood up, embraced and thanked their visitors.
Ochoa-Lopez’s husband, clad in a silver suit jacket, white pants and a bow tie smiled at mourners as they approached. With bloodshot eyes, her father welcomed everyone into the funeral home with a hug.
About 14 additional relatives sat behind the immediate family, and visitors lined up behind them.
“It just started,” said Jesus Maldonado, Ochoa-Lopez’s uncle. “This is all very hard. It feels like it will never end.”
Photographs of Ochoa-Lopez with her son and selfies showing off her acrylic nail set her mom did for her were displayed on two screens in a slideshow.
Prayers cards were handed out, inscribed in Spanish with “Todo lo puedo en Cristo que me fortalece,” meaning, “I can do anything with Christ’s strength.”
Ham and cheese croissant sandwiches, churros, water and pan dulce were set out on tables and offered by volunteers who collected the donated snacks.
Teresa Meza, a friend of Ochoa-Lopez’s mother, Raquel Uriostegui, who has been at her side since Ochoa-Lopez went missing, was helping hand out food as the grieving left.
“I can’t imagine,” Meza said in Spanish, of the pain her friend is enduring. “I do what I can.”
Family friend Maria Martinez was grateful for everyone who attended, even non-relatives who simply wanted to show their support after the tragedy.
“There are people that don’t know her, but it hurts us all. How can people be so bad?” said Martinez outside the funeral home as she left.
Ochoa-Lopez was expecting her second child, due in a matter of weeks, when she logged into a moms group on Facebook and made contact with a woman who would later be charged with killing her. In a post on April 22, the teen said she needed a double stroller and some baby clothes.
She got an answer from Clarisa Figueroa, 46, who asked Ochoa-Lopez to come to her home in the 4100 block of West 77th Place the next day. Police and prosecutors said Figueroa and her daughter, Desiree Figueroa, strangled the teen and the elder Figueroa cut the near-full-term baby from her body.
The baby had problems breathing, and the elder Figueroa called 911. Paramedics took her and the baby to Advocate Christ Medical Center, where the boy was placed on life support and Figueroa was examined after claiming to be the mother.
Even though an exam showed Figueroa had not given birth, the hospital did not notify anyone until two weeks later, after detectives went to the hospital asking about the baby. It was another week before Ochoa-Lopez’s body was found and the Figueroas were arrested, along with the elder Figueroa’s boyfriend, Piotr Bobak, 40.
The baby remains on life support at Advocate Christ, where doctors say the boy is brain-dead. But the family says they have no plans to end his life. “This is the gift Marlen left me,” explained the teen’s father, Arnulfo Ochoa.
Ochoa-Lopez spent her first two years in Mexico, raised by her grandparents, while her parents settled in Chicago.
“I had her since she was a baby,” said Ochoa-Lopez’s grandmother Custodia Castro Rodriguez. “I carried her everywhere. I’d hold her hand and take her with me to the store.”
Ochoa-Lopez would dance when people played music or sang to her. She loved going on rides at fairs and dressing up for church. When it was time to come to Chicago, she didn’t want to leave her grandparents.
“I convinced her to get on the plane to go see her daddy,” Rodriguez said. “When we took her to the airport, I remember seeing her little hand waving at us. That was the last time I saw her in person.”
Visitation continues Friday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at Mount Auburn Funeral Home at 4101 S. Oak Park Ave. in Stickney. The funeral will be held at 9 a.m. Saturday at the funeral home’s chapel, and she will be buried at Mount Auburn Memorial Park at the same Oak Park Avenue address in Stickney.
jvillagomez@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @JessicaVillag
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