By TINA SFONDELES
Chicago Sun-Times
Friends of a Alma B. Hernandez, killed in an apparent murder-suicide at a Loop loan store on Friday afternoon, say she was a devoted mom who spoke frequently about her two children.
Alma Hernandez | Baird & Warner
Authorities identified the dead as 45-year-old Richard Idrovo and the 44-year-old Hernandez, both of the 17700 block of Flannagan Court in Tinley Park.
Police say Idrovo walked into the back of the AmeriCash Loans store about 2:30 p.m. Friday and shot Hernandez twice. He then walked back to the front of the store and took his own life, according to Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy, who spoke with reporters at the scene on Friday.
Neighbors in Tinley Park say they’re shocked.
“I loved Alma and Richard, and I’m very upset,” one neighbor, who didn’t want to be named, said. “They are two wonderful people and something went wrong,” she said, adding the two lived in the home with Idrovo’s mother.
Molly Surowitz was a co-worker of Hernandez’s at the Baird-Warner office in Tinley Park. Surowitz said Hernandez had just started working at the real estate office earlier this year, and worked in residential real estate.
“She was a wonderful person and we’re sincerely saddened and our concern is for her children,” Surowitz said on Saturday.
Surowitz said Hernandez spoke of her two children often: “She was just a warm, committed person. She was a great mother. She loved her kids very much.”