Vanessa Lopez found the boy propped up against the garage behind her Little Village home, a cellphone ringing at his side.
Her first thought was he was drunk. But then she saw that the boy -- 16-year-old Arturo Santana -- wasn't breathing.
Lopez and her mother tried to revive him with CPR. Lopez also answered the phone: It was Santana's mother wondering where her son was. And why someone else was on the line.
Lopez told the woman her son had no pulse. "He's not breathing. I think he's dead," Lopez told her.
The teen's mother rushed over from her home nearby in hysterics. "I did not know him," Lopez said of the teen. "We just wanted to help him."
Lopez said she was taking out the garbage at about 9:15 p.m. Wednesday when she saw Santana lying up against her garage in the 2600 block of Ridgeway Avenue on the city's West Side.
Santana was stabbed in the chest, shoulder and abdomen, according to police.
Santana had attended Farragut High School, 2345 S. Christiana Ave., but transferred out of the Chicago Public Schools system in January, apparently to go to school in Mexico, said schools spokeswoman Monique Bond.
Santana's aunt, Elizabeth Carranza, said her nephew told his mother he was going to leave for a while and buy some candy.
She said the teen liked playing basketball and went to Catholic church every Sunday with his parents.
He was also the oldest of five children, with three younger sisters and a younger brother.
A law enforcement source said Santana was affiliated with the Latin Kings. But his family and friends -- 20 of them sitting in a line that stretched throughout his Little Village apartment Thursday night -- say the teen steered clear from trouble.
"He was very respectful to everybody. He never looked for trouble," said family friend Jesus Rodriguez. "He was a very quiet, serious person."
Another family friend, Meleny Pizano, who insists Santana wasn't part of a gang, says he was always under gang-recruitment pressure in the neighborhood. She said the teen's father even stayed in school with him at least once to shield him from the street gangs.
"He (Santana) would walk out of school and they were pressuring him to throw down (gang signs)," Pizano said, citing stories she's heard from the family.
No one was in custody Thursday and a motive behind the slaying was unknown. Neighbors said there has been an ongoing gang rivalry in the area.
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