Demetrius Griffin Jr. is remembered through a church window and neighborhood memorials as his family continues waiting for answers.
CHICAGO, Ill. — Ten years after 15-year-old Demetrius Griffin Jr. was killed in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, his image remains part of the community through a stained-glass church window and memorials created as his family continues seeking answers in the unsolved homicide.
Griffin is depicted in the Sankofa Peace Window at New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, where he grew up, attended Sunday school and was baptized. The window honors young people whose lives were lost to violence and has become one of the most visible ways Griffin’s community has kept his memory alive since his death in September 2016. The Rev. Marshall Hatch Jr. said children at the church helped select the young people represented in the artwork and that Griffin’s deep connection to the congregation made his inclusion a natural choice.
The memorial stands in contrast to the lack of resolution in the case. Griffin disappeared on the evening of Sept. 16, 2016. Police responding to a refuse fire about 1:25 a.m. the next morning found him in a burning garbage container in an alley in the 5500 block of West Cortez Street, a short distance from his home. The Cook County medical examiner ruled the death a homicide and determined that Griffin was alive when the fire began. No arrest has been publicly announced in the case.
Before his death became the subject of a long-running homicide investigation, Griffin was a freshman at Steinmetz College Prep. His family described him as energetic, generous and especially fond of animals. His aunt, Rochelle Sykes, recalled that he would sometimes ask her for enough money to buy something both for himself and for a dog. Family members also said he had hoped to join his high school’s swim team and rarely violated his curfew.
Those memories have shaped how Sykes has responded to the years since the killing. Near the alley where Griffin was found, a cross, tree and bench have served as reminders of the teenager who once lived nearby. Sykes also placed a small book box at the site and stocked it with books, gloves and hats for neighborhood children. Although the box was later removed, she told FOX 32 Chicago that she hopes to replace it. She viewed the items taken by children not as losses but as signs that Griffin’s memory was still helping others.
The church memorial also grew out of a broader effort to remember young Chicagoans killed by violence. When the stained-glass window was dedicated in 2019, Griffin’s family and faith leaders used the occasion to renew attention to his unsolved case. Community supporters announced that a reward for information had grown to $15,000, up from earlier amounts offered in the years after his death. The reward campaign reflected the family’s determination to keep asking for information even as the investigation stretched further from the night Griffin was killed.
Hatch and other church leaders have continued to frame remembrance as more than a record of loss. The Sankofa Peace Window links the stories of young victims to a message about preserving memory and confronting violence. For Griffin’s family, the window also ensures that people who enter the church encounter an image of the teenager as part of the congregation and neighborhood where he spent his childhood, rather than knowing him only through the circumstances of his death.
That distinction remains important to Sykes. She has repeatedly spoken about Griffin as a nephew with interests, habits and plans rather than only as the victim of an unsolved homicide. Her account of his generosity toward animals and her effort to distribute books and winter clothing in his name have become part of the family’s attempt to preserve those ordinary details while continuing to press for information about the crime.
The killing, however, continues to shape the family’s life. Sykes told FOX 32 that she has not spoken with detectives since before the COVID-19 pandemic and said relatives have spent years seeking updates. She also continues to question what happened after Griffin walked a young girl part of the way home on the evening he disappeared. What occurred between that point and the discovery of the fire has not been publicly established.
A decade after Griffin’s death, the memorials have endured while the central question remains unanswered. His family, church and neighborhood continue to preserve his memory, and community leaders are again asking anyone with information to come forward. As of the latest public reporting, no one had been arrested or charged in Griffin’s killing.
Author note: Last updated October 24, 2026.