GOOSE ISLAND — Family, friends and neighbors gathered Friday evening for a vigil honoring 26-year-old Noah Enos.
Enos, who had been missing for several days, was found June 17 in the Chicago River near the 1300 block of North Elston Avenue, according to police and the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office. He was pronounced dead on the scene and autopsy results are pending, police officials said.
On Friday night, loved ones joined neighbors near the Salt Shed, 1357 N. Elston Ave., to pray and remember Enos.
The music venue was the last place Enos was seen before he went missing on June 12, the night he attended a King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard concert there.
Nicole Wijs, Enos’ girlfriend, held back tears while reading an old text message he sent her.
“You’re my favorite person in the world and I look up to you a lot,” Wijs read from her phone, placing one hand on her heart.
The couple lived together in Wicker Park and Wijs said Enos was an affectionate boyfriend.
“He was the most passionate, sweetest, genuine person I’ve ever met in my entire life,” she said.
Sarah Wetherell, a close friend of Wijs, said the couple knew each other since middle school and she had watched their relationship blossom.
“I got to watch her grow, they were awesome together,” Wetherell said.
Though they were together for just two years, “It could have been 50, it could have been forever,” Wetherell said.
Kathy Vanderwarf and Steven Enos, Eno’s stepmother and father, said their family is working with private investigators and Chicago police to try and figure out what happened to their son.
From hanging up flyers, knocking on doors, posting on social media and looking under bridges, Enos said he is “so proud” of how hard his younger son, Zach Enos, and Wijs had worked to try to find him.
Vanderwarf said she has “been up day and night” sharing their GoFundMe on social media to try to pay for funeral costs and doing her own research on other cases where people were found dead near the river.
“We know he was murdered and we believe that there’s a serial killer,” Vanderwarf said.
Since December, at least 5 young men were reported missing for several days before their bodies were discovered in either Lake Michigan or the Chicago River, NBC reported. This has fueled speculation on social media that a serial killer is to blame, though city and county officials told NBC there is no evidence the cases are related.
Steven Enos said the family is “not going to give up.”
“We’re going to try to help make a change, do something because it happened to us and it could be somebody else’s child next year,” Vanderwarf said.
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