Chicago

‘She Will Never Be Forgotten': Loved Ones Bid Final Goodbye to Marlen Ochoa

"If there is no justice, there is no peace," mourners chanted inside the church in Spanish

NBC 5 will livestream the final hour of church services at 11 a.m.

Friends, family and an entire community united at Mount Auburn Funeral Home Saturday morning to pay their final respects to slain 19-year-old mother, Marlen Ochoa.

For the last two days, mourners have gathered in south suburban Stickney, Illinois to remember a good wife and loving mother, whom according to prosecutors, was killed the day she reportedly went missing on April 23, and was strangled to death before her baby was cut from her womb.

Marlen Ochoa's baby remains on life support, hospitalized in the NICU where doctors say he has shown some brain activity in recent days.

Ochoa's extended family was able to travel from Mexico to Illinois on Tuesday to say goodbye to their once youngest family member.

“She will never be forgotten," said activist and family spokeswoman Julie Contreras. "This baby, she belongs to all of us."

“Today I stand in front of my people…Marlen was not only the daughter of her parents and the wife of her husband, she is the daughter of our pueblo; and she will be etched forever in the laws of the state of Illinois and in this country for today we put on the road the path of a bill that will be called “Marlen’s Law,” she declared.

According to Contreras, if this bill passes, “any individual who enters a hospital in the state of Illinois or across this nation will have to provide identity through ID and DNA to prove that if they come in with an infant that they say was born in their home, they have to show us.”

In Contreras' final remarks, she was able to get the audience to chant in unison "if there is no justice, there is no peace," in Spanish.

"Marlen is everyone’s daughter today," family spokeswoman Cecilia Garcia said at a vigil for Ochoa Wednesday night. "We have to make sure that this never ever happens to anybody else again."

Last week, Clarisa Figueroa and her daughter Desiree Figueroa were charged with the teen’s murder, and Clarisa Figueroa's boyfriend Piotr Bobak was charged with concealing the homicide.

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