Pair charged in fatal Bridgeview shooting brought along boy, 6
Two men charged with murder brought along one of their little brothers, age 6, to a fatal shooting Wednesday afternoon outside an Illinois secretary of state’s driver facility in Bridgeview, prosecutors said Friday.
The shooting, which took place about 1:35 p.m. Wednesday outside the office, 7368 W. 87th St., in the southwest suburb, was possibly sparked by a disagreement over rap music, according to police spokesman Ray Hanania. Authorities identified the man killed as Jawaun Davis, 21, of the 1000 block of East 73rd Street in Chicago.
Charged with murder were Matthew Givens, 23, of the 17200 block of Lorenz Avenue in Lansing, and Cortez Hudson, 23, of the first block of West Superior Street in Oak Park, according to Hanania. The two also were charged with attempted carjacking in an attack during the police pursuit that ended in their capture after they couldn’t start a Tesla car they were trying to make off with, Hanania said.
The case has a “potential natural life sentence” and was carried out in a “cold, calculated and premeditated” manner, Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney John Huff told Bridgeview Court Judge Linzey D. Jones, who denied bail for both during a bond hearing that was livestreamed Friday afternoon.
Neither rap music nor any direct motive was brought up during the hearing, but Huff said the man killed and the suspects belonged to rival gangs.
Davis, who was unarmed, had been waiting in the line that extended outside the building for several hours when, about half an hour before the attack, Hudson and Givens showed up in a red Nissan Sentra belonging to Hudson’s mother. Also in the car was Hudson’s 6-yearold brother.
Givens had a .40-caliber handgun with a modified fully automatic switch, and Hudson had a 9 mm handgun with an extended clip, Huff said.
Just before 1:30 p.m. Hudson walked past Davis, and once he was behind Davis, fired the gun, striking Davis multiple times. Given then approached Davis and fired at him, also several times. A total of 23 rounds were fired from the two guns, prosecutors said.
The two attackers fled in a red Nissan Sentra as the shooting was recorded on surveillance video at several nearby businesses.
Additionally, several witnesses saw or heard the attack.
One witness who was in the parking lot just before the shooting saw two masked men standing near a red vehicle and “scanning” the line, and then saw one of the same men firing, as Davis grabbed his chest and fell over, Huff said.
That witness, as well as at least one additional witness, identified Givens as someone who fired an automatic weapon. The witness heard a series of shots, a brief pause and then a second round of gunfire in “rapid succession,” Huff said.
Surveillance video also captured the two fleeing in the red Sentra, which drove down 87th Street to Cicero Avenue as police were following.
At 1:40 p.m., an Oak Lawn officer saw the car driving “erratically” and tried to pull it over, but it didn’t stop and fled, weaving in and out of traffic traveling through “multiple jurisdictions” before getting on Interstate 294 and exiting at 95th Street with police still behind.
Just after 1:50 p.m., police briefly lost sight of the Sentra, but a minute later, it stopped at 97th Street and Roberts Road, where the two men got out with “Hudson’s 6-yearold brother in tow,” Huff said.
One minute later, Hudson approached and pointed a firearm at a Tesla owner, who was showing his car off to a friend.
“This is a carjacking,” Hudson told the owner, while the car owner and his friend moved away and Hudson approached but did not enter.
Hudson, the 6-year-old brother and Givens then leaped over a nearby fence to get to where the Tesla owner was, and in doing so Hudson dropped the Sentra’s keys.
“The Tesla owner was threatened and he left the vehicle to the carjackers,” but when Givens and Hudson got in the car, they were unable to “figure out how to get it started,” Hanania said. That delay “allowed police to catch up with them and arrest them,” Hanania said in an email.
The Tesla owner identified Hudson as the person who tried to carjack him before helping the 6-year-old over the fence, and the two were arrested by 2:15 p.m., within minutes of the carjacking, on the border between Palos Hills and Hickory Hills
Police located two guns — a 9 mm and a .40 caliber — which Givens had discarded.
Police “believe this was an intentionally planned shooting targeting the victim,” Hanania said earlier, in an email.