9/8/2021- 8:38 p.m.
Chicago – Few days ago. Man uses a machete to chop a bank teller to death for no reason.
Friends and family say the bank teller who was killed last week in a deadly stabbing at a Chase Bank in Chicago had just begun a new chapter in her life.
By all accounts, Jessica Vilaythong was carving out her world in Chicago after graduating college last year, which makes the randomness of the attack all the more painful for the people who were part of her day-to-day.
Last Wednesday, she went into work like any other weekday. No one knew Vilaythong, just 24 years old, would later be robbed of the rest of her life.
“I knew she worked at a Chase Bank. I didn’t know that she worked at that particular one,” said Eboni Rivera, who knew Vilaythong as a customer of her business with an unforgettable grin.
“That’s something I really do remember about her always is the smile. She was really supportive of me, and it is really sad. I’m going to miss her a lot.”
Vilaythong was in the lobby of her bank that day when Jawaun Westbrooks walked in.
He had a rap sheet, a history of mental illness, and a knife.
Police say Westbrooks stabbed her in the neck. She died at the hospital two days later.
