A man died on the South Side this week due to heat-related causes, becoming the 14th person to die this year from high temperatures in Cook County.
Bill J. Humphrey, 78, died Wednesday night at a home in the 1700 block of East 86th Place in Avalon Park, according to the county’s medical examiner’s office. Autopsy results released Friday showed he died of heart disease with “heat stress” marked as a contributing factor.
Chicago police did not immediately share additional information.
Eleven of the 14 heat-related deaths in Cook County have happened in Chicago. All 11 of those people have died on the South or West sides, except for one person who died on in the East Side neighborhood.
More people have died from the heat in Cook County this year than in any previous year of the last decade, according to a WBEZ and Chicago Sun-Times analysis. For comparison, the previous two peak years topped out at six deaths each in 2019 and 2022.
The Chicago area was under heat-related advisories for most the last week. On Wednesday, the day the latest heat-related death was recorded, a high temperature of 96 degrees was recorded at O’Hare Airport. High humidity has pushed the heat index, or how the temperature feels, past 100 degrees multiple times this week.