Naperville man sentenced to 38 years for fatal beating of his wife
Judge Ann Celine O’Hallaren Walsh sentenced Naperville resident Alan Wang to thirty-eight years in the Illinois Department of Corrections for the 2020 beating death of his wife, Hongyan Yang, DuPage County State’s Attorney Bob Berlin announced on June 23. Wang, age 62, was found guilty of one count of First Degree Murder following a four-day bench trial that concluded on September 12, 2025.
Authorities responded to the couple’s residence on March 8, 2020, after receiving a call about an unresponsive woman. Yang was transported to a local hospital and pronounced dead less than an hour later. An investigation revealed that Wang had kicked his wife multiple times after discovering texts from another man on her phone the previous evening. The next day, a relative called emergency services when Yang stopped breathing.
Wang initially faced charges of Aggravated Domestic Battery and was released from custody after posting bond with electronic monitoring. After an autopsy determined blunt force trauma as the cause of death, charges were upgraded to First Degree Murder in June 2020 and his bond increased; he has remained in custody since July that year.
Berlin said, “The violent beating Alan Wang administered to his wife that resulted in her death, is yet another tragic reminder that domestic violence continues to plague society. Regrettably, there is still a significant amount of work to be done to prevent domestic violence, and in extreme cases, tragedies such as what we saw with the death of Hongyan Yang. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Violent Death Reporting System, in 2023, the most recent year statistics are available, 1,373 women lost their lives at the hands of a spouse or intimate partner. Tragically, at just thirty-five-years-old, with a full life ahead of her, Hongyan joins those whose lives were lost to domestic violence. I wish her surviving family and friends strength as they continue their lives with just memories of Hongyan to see them through. Judge O’Hallaren Walsh’s thirty-eight-year-sentence, however, ensures that Mr. Wang will never again be in the position to harm another woman, and for that we are all thankful. I commend Assistant State’s Attorneys Amanda Meindl, Sara Henley and Jeff O’Boyle for their outstanding efforts in proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Alan Wang violently took the life of his wife.”
Wang will be required by law to serve one hundred percent of his sentence before becoming eligible for parole.
DuPage County is home to more than two hundred schools serving over one hundred forty thousand students; teacher absenteeism rates stood at over thirty-eight percent during the last school year according to the Illinois State Board of Education.