COPS HOPE SECURITY CAMERAS WILL POINT TO JUDGE’S KILLER
Neighbor reported hearing yelling, ‘ Don’t kill him!’
Cook County Associate Judge Raymond Myles persuaded his South Side neighbors to install surveillance cameras on their homes. Now those same cameras could help solve Monday’s fatal shooting of the judge, police said.
Police were checking the cameras to see whether they could help identify the gunman. Detectives are considering a variety of motives including robbery — as well as possible links to a beating the judge suffered in 2015 and recent threats that he’d received.
“You have our word that we will not let Judge Myles’ life be lost in vain, and we will hold his killer accountable,” Chicago Police Deputy Supt. Kevin Navarro said at a news conference.
Myles, 66, was shot about 4: 50 a. m. outside his home in the 9400 block of South Forest.
His 52- year- old girlfriend was shot in the leg and taken to Christ Advocate Medical Center in Oak Lawn.
A neighbor said he was in his home when he heard a woman outside yelling, “Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him!” Then he heard about five gunshots.
The neighbor went outside and saw the girlfriend lying in the backyard. Myles’ body was on the back porch.
Police said they don’t believe the shootingswere random.
Myles’ girlfriend encountered the shooter on a concrete pad between the house and the garage, Chief of Detectives Melissa Staples told reporters. The two “exchanged words,” and the woman was shot. The woman didn’t appear to know the shooter, Staples said.
Myles came out of the house in response to the noise.
He and the gunman argued, and the man shot Myles multiple times before running away, Staples said. His girlfriend called 911.
Neighbors said Myles and his girlfriend often left the house together early to work out, according to police.
Detectives said they were pursuing “promising” leads, some from the surveillance cameras. The FBI has offered a $ 25,000 reward, police said.
Investigators say the violent encounter may have begun as a robbery attempt, but nothing appeared to be taken from the house or victims.
In addition to a holdup, police said they are looking into whether the shootings are connected to recent threats against Myles or an apparent road- rage incident that left him with serious injuries last year.
In September 2015, Myles was trying to park when another driver struck his car. The other motorist allegedly punched Myles in the face when the judge began taking pictures of the damage. Myles reportedly suffered a fractured nose and other injuries requiring surgery.
Deandre Hudson is facing an aggravated battery charge in that case. He’s free on bond, records show.
Police are also looking into a protection order that Myles’ girlfriend took out against a man more than a year ago, sources said.
The resident who heard the gunshots said he’s known the judge for more than a decade since Myles moved to the 9400 block of South Forest in theWest Chesterfield neighborhood just north of Roseland.
Myles almost never told anyone on the block that he was a judge, the neighbor said.
“I doubt more than five people on our block know that,” he said.
The man, who asked that his name not be used, said he and Myles sometimes talked about community activism.
“I would relate some of my experiences about having been a teacher. He would share thoughts about where things should go in terms of making a better path for our African- American young men.”
Myles participated in the block club and arranged to have a bouncy house for children at one of their parties. He also persuaded more than a dozen neighbors to join him and install video surveillance cameras on their properties, his neighbor said.
“We need to knowthat the assailant is caught,” the neighbor said. “We hope the cameras have something to do with it. That would be a silver lining in all of this.”
Mayor Rahm Emanuel issued an emailed statement expressing his sympathy.
“Judge Raymond My les was a wellrespected and long-serving jurist, and we mourn his tragic loss,” the mayor said.
During his almost two- decade career as a judge, Myles presided over several high- profile cases.
In 2008, he ordered William Balfour, the estranged brother- inlaw of Oscar- winning actress Jennifer Hudson, held without bail in the slayings of her mother, brother and nephew. Balfour was later convicted.
Myles also presided over pretrial hearings for the two men convicted in the Brown’s Chicken case involving seven people slain in a Palatine restaurant in 1993.
Presiding Criminal Judge Leroy Martin said the news of Myles’ death shocked him and many who knew Myles at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse at 26th and California.
Myles’ court call each day involved youth and drug offenders who landed at the courthouse. The daily influx of mostly young men and people with substance abuse problems was a caseload Myles was passionate about.
“It was important to him, targeting young people and trying to keep them on the straight and narrow and out of the penitentiary,” Martin saidMonday morning during an interview in his chambers.
Outside Myles’ courtroom on Monday, the public was diverted away as assistant public defenders and prosecutors who worked with the slain judge consoled one another. The cases on Myles’ call were transferred to another judge, visitors were told.
One sheriff’s deputy assigned to the courthouse told the Sun- Times thatMyles was loved.
“JUDGE RAYMOND MYLESWAS AWELL- RESPECTED AND LONG- SERVING JURIST, AND WE MOURN HIS TRAGIC LOSS.” MAYOR RAHM EMANUEL