Alexander Kazanowski died four days after he was found badly injured outside a bar on West Belmont Avenue.
CHICAGO, Ill. — Chicago police are trying to identify and question four people after 25-year-old Alexander Kazanowski was beaten outside an Avondale bar in late March and died days later, a homicide investigation that drew renewed attention this week when authorities released surveillance video from the area.
The case matters now because the public phase of the investigation has shifted from a single early morning assault to a targeted search for people police believe may have key information about what happened before Kazanowski was found on the ground along West Belmont Avenue. Detectives have not announced any arrests or publicly described a motive. What they have said is that Kazanowski was involved in a fight inside a nearby bar, was later found critically hurt outside, and died after four days in the hospital. The new video and images mark the clearest sign yet of where investigators believe the final chain of events began.
According to police and the Cook County medical examiner, the sequence began around 3:19 a.m. on March 24 in the 3900 block of West Belmont Avenue in Avondale. Kazanowski was found unresponsive on the ground with serious head injuries and was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in critical condition. He died at 3:31 p.m. on March 28. An autopsy the next day found that he died of blunt head trauma from an assault, and the death was ruled a homicide. The public record also adds an important earlier step. Detectives learned that Kazanowski had been “forcibly removed” from Tune Up Bar after a fight there, according to a police report cited in local coverage. Police have not said how the fight started, how many people were involved inside the bar, or how the confrontation moved from the business to the street where Kazanowski was found.
This week, police sharpened the search by releasing surveillance video and still images of four people they want to identify and interview. ABC7 reported that the footage was captured around 3:15 a.m. on March 24 in the 3900 block of West Belmont Avenue, only minutes before Kazanowski was found. CBS Chicago and police descriptions say the group includes three men and one woman. One man was described as wearing a black jacket, black baseball cap and blue jeans. A second man was described as wearing a black jacket, white hooded sweatshirt and black pants. A third man was described as wearing a blue jacket, blue jeans and a brown winter hat. The woman was described as Asian and wearing a black jacket and white pants. Police have been careful in public statements not to call the four people suspects. Instead, the department has said it wants to identify and speak with them in connection with the homicide investigation. That distinction leaves a central question unresolved: whether investigators believe the group witnessed the assault, took part in it, or knows who did.
The victim’s life has figured heavily in how the case is being received beyond the police alert. Family members and local outlets say Kazanowski, who went by Xander, was 25, grew up in South Barrington and had built a public image around hustle, performance and fatherhood. His obituary says he was survived by his partner, Tori Zanoni, their daughter, Thea, and an expected son, John. It also says he was an organ donor. The Daily Herald reported that he had been a Barrington High School wrestler and that he started Wurk Services at 19, first offering landscaping and later expanding into a wider list of jobs in the Chicago area. His brother Christian described the business as “an Uber-type concept,” while family materials described Kazanowski as someone who tried many pursuits at once, including acting, modeling and music. Those details do not explain the violence that killed him, but they do explain why the homicide has traveled beyond a routine police notice and into a broader public mourning for a young father whose second child had not yet been born.
At the same time, the known evidence remains narrow. Police have not publicly said whether Kazanowski knew the four people seen in the video. They have not said whether any weapon was used, whether shell casings or other physical evidence were recovered, or whether nearby businesses and homes captured more footage than the clip already released. Authorities also have not described any witness statements from inside the bar, any dispute that may have preceded the fight, or whether alcohol service or security staffing at the business has become part of the inquiry. What is on the record is limited but significant: Kazanowski was in or near a bar before dawn, there was a fight serious enough that he was removed, he was later found badly injured on the street, and detectives now believe four people visible in video from the same area are important enough to be publicly identified. That is enough to move the case forward, but not enough yet to answer the question family and investigators are both pressing for: who delivered the blows that turned a street corner in Avondale into a homicide scene.
The procedural track is clearer than the motive. Area 5 detectives are handling the investigation, while Cook County Crime Stoppers has offered up to a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. In a news release carried by local television outlets, Crime Stoppers executive director Paul Rutherford called the killing “a brutal and senseless act of violence” and said the organization would keep working until those responsible were held accountable. For now, though, the criminal case remains at the identification stage rather than the charging stage. The family’s next public milestone is a memorial service scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday, April 11, at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, with visitation beginning an hour earlier. That service is likely to bring together two timelines at once: the family’s effort to mark Kazanowski’s life and the city’s unfinished attempt to explain how a predawn bar fight ended in a fatal beating on Belmont Avenue.
As of Friday, no one had been charged and police had not released a fuller account of what happened between the bar fight and the moment Kazanowski was found on the street. The next visible step in the case is likely to be the identification of the four people in the surveillance images or a new police update that narrows who investigators believe was directly involved.
Author note: Last updated April 10, 2026.