This latest story says it was a shooting.
http://www.dailyherald.com/search/main_story.asp?intid=3842093
Businesses reopen at site of murders
By Kara Spak Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted 3/9/2005
On Monday morning, Natasha Ivanov planned to start the expansion of Lisa's Catering, the family-style Russian restaurant in Wheeling she and other immigrant owners proudly helped grow into a prosperous business.
Instead, police were on the doorstep of her Palatine home at 5 a.m., asking her about two Russian immigrants found dead and a third man wounded near the strip mall where her restaurant and a number of other Russian-owned businesses are located.
Ivanov said she did not know Arkadiy Stepankovskiy, 29, and Roman Drobetskiy, 34, the two men slain behind a Hintz Road strip mall.
By Tuesday evening, Wheeling police and investigators with the multi-jurisdictional North Regional Major Crimes Task Force were continuing to interview many in the Russian community, trying to chase down leads.
No arrests had been made as of Tuesday night, though the investigation continued to center on the local Russian community.
"We're still questioning a lot of people," said Wheeling police Deputy Chief John Stone. "We're still trying to put it all together."
Wheeling police said Monday the two men were fatally shot, and residents at nearby Mallard Lakes apartment complex reported hearing shots fired. A spokesman at the Cook County Medical Examiner's office said Tuesday Drobetskiy suffered multiple stab wounds and Stepankovskiy was beaten.
Drobetskiy lived in Wheeling with his wife. Stepankovskiy, who lived in Des Plaines with his wife and 5-year-old daughter, was a knife-fighting martial arts expert who ran the Systema Academy of Self Protection in Chicago.
The Russian-owned stores lining the Garden Fresh Plaza on Hintz Road - including Ivanov's restaurant and a Russian-owned real estate office, liquor store, cell phone store, jewelry store and video store - were back in business Tuesday.
Business owners there said they were interviewed by police, but many declined to speak about the killings.
"There's a little bit of talk" about the murders, said Mark Kogan, who's worked selling Russian and American videos, compact discs and Russian newspapers and books at Melodia in the strip mall since emigrating from the Ukraine eight years ago. "I don't know anything."
Ivanov said not only are many of the strip mall's stores Russian-owned, many Russians live in nearby apartment complexes. She said she's felt safe working in the area and has never thought twice about locking up the restaurant alone after a late night working.
"I've been here three years and I've never had this problem," Ivanov said. "The people who live around here, who order catering, are nice people."
Anyone with tips on the murders is asked to call an investigation hotline at (847) 853-7580.
Buffalo Grove and Wheeling were popular stops for many of the more than 30,000 Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union who have come to the Chicago area in the past two decades, said Suzanne Franklin, director of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in Chicago. Others have come from the former Soviet Union on work visas or to be with their families.
"Naturally some of the growth happens where the schools are better, there are job opportunities," Franklin said.
Murders: Six stores at strip mall Russian-owned
