CHICAGO _ Marlen Ochoa-Lopez was a toddler when she left Mexico, and her parents said she always dreamed of going back and visiting them.
She never got the chance. On Tuesday, her grandparents made the sad trip to Chicago for the 19-year-old's funeral, a week after her body was found strangled in the backyard of a Southwest Side home. The baby boy she had been carrying was cut from her womb and remains connected to life support.
"For us, it's very painful, especially being so far away," Ochoa-Lopez's grandmother said through a translator Tuesday night in brief remarks at O'Hare International Airport. "It hurts us profoundly that we lost our granddaughter. We have come here to give our final goodbye."
The grandparents, along with the grandparents of Ochoa-Lopez's husband, then went to Lincoln United Methodist Church to reunited with other family members. They said they hoped to visit the baby Wednesday.
Visitation for Ochoa-Lopez will be held from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday at the Mount Auburn Funeral Home at 4101 S. Oak Park Ave. in Stickney. The funeral will be at 9 a.m. Saturday at the funeral home's chapel. She will be buried at Mount Auburn Memorial Park at the same Oak Park Avenue address.
Ochoa-Lopez was strangled April 23 after she went to a Southwest Side home to meet a woman about baby clothes and a stroller, according to Chicago police. Her baby boy was cut from her and remains in the intensive care unit at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.
Three people who lived in the home _ a woman, her daughter and the older woman's boyfriend _ have been charged in the death.
Ochoa-Lopez also had a 3-year-old son.
