Jessica Hampton: Stabbed to death on train in front of onlookers

Jessica Hampton, 25, was stabbed to death in front of onlookers on June 24 on Chicago's Red Line train. Her boyfriend is in custody for her death.

Jessica Hampton, a West Englewood mother of one, was studying cosmetology, trying to get her life together, according to her family.

The 25-year-old was having some custody issues with her boyfriend over her child. They would argue, as is typical, but one thing was clear: Hampton loved her baby very much and would give the child the world if she could.

On Thursday, Hampton was taken from this world in a shocking and public incident. 

Hampton and her boyfriend, riding together on Chicago's Red LIne CTA train, got into it again over the child. Witnesses say her boyfriend would ride the train often and was never any trouble. This time he was sitting across from Hampton when the two had words. As the train near the Greater Grand Crossing, the boyfriend snapped: He jumped up and began poking Hampton with something, her body jerking each time. By the time passengers saw blood, it was too late. Hampton had crumpled to the floor. 

It was then that witnesses say, her boyfriend did the unthinkable: He slit her neck.

"He asked the young lady a question, she said no, and he got up and started stabbing her," Andrea Patterson, a witness, told ABC7Chicago. "She fell toward the floor and he slit her neck."

Horrified witnesses did not come to save her although some tried. Instead, on social media, pictures of the woman's lifeless body began to fill news feeds on Facebook and Twitter. Clips of the awful slaying -- with Hampton lying in a pool of blood -- began to circulate online.

That's how her family actually found out: "For us to go on Facebook and see this," her cousin said, according to DNAinfo.com. "We go on there and we see our family lying there like that, is wrong, and it's not cool."

"This family was watching that video yesterday, they were looking at the pictures on Facebook that people were spreading, not knowing until 9 o'clock last night it was their loved one they were looking at," Dawn Valente, identified by ABC7Chicago, as a victims advocate, said.

The incident, which has shaken public transit riders in Chicago, was part of an "ongoing domestic dispute," Deputy Police Supt. John Escalante said, according to DNAinfo.com. "There was some talk about a child."

Hampton's family is beside themselves with grief. "My sister was a beautiful, gifted young lady. She did not deserve to go the way she did," Lorel Hampton told ABC7Chicago.

Her boyfriend, who has not been identified by police, is in custody. Prosecutors are still weighing charges against him, according to reports.