Prosecutors: After man shot 19 times, teen shooter laughs
The girl got a bad feeling as she walked with her boyfriend toward the intersection of Karlov Avenue and 27th Street, where a dark-colored sedan seemed to lie in wait on the northwest corner.
She warned him that the occupants could be Latin Kings, the bitter rival to his Two-Six gang, a dispute with a history of bad blood in the Little Village neighborhood that stretches back to the early 1970s. The pair maintained their course on the West Side street until two people emerged from the car, each wearing hoods, face masks and carrying handguns with attached laser sights, according to Cook County prosecutors.
The alleged gunmen, ages 15 and 16, fired a volley of gunfire as Noe Mondragon-Jimenez, 27, and the girl fled in terror about 9:30 p.m. on July 2, authorities said.
But Mondragon-Jimenez could not escape.
After he fell to the ground with 19 gunshot wounds, the 15-year-old approached the victim’s bullet-riddled body and struck him with his gun before running off, laughing, to the getaway car, authorities told a judge during a bail hearing for the older teen.
The girl described in court as MondragonJimenez’s girlfriend, who is still a minor herself, told authorities she thought she recognized the shooters.
Both teen suspects were arrested at their homes on Sunday and later charged with first-degree murder in Mondragon-Jimenez’s death, though the 15-yearold was charged as a juvenile. In separate hearings, judges remanded both to custody, authorities said.
The 16-year-old was charged as an adult, but his Tuesday hearing was not televised publicly online. The judge, Mary Marubio, cut the public feed before the hearing because of the defendant’s age.
But before the hearing got underway, she said she would bring the matter up for future review, as she did not want to exclude the defendant’s family from the proceedings.
The shooting happened a day before the start of the violent July 4 holiday when at least 80 people were shot, at least 17 of those fatally, across the city. Many of those shooting incidents were believed to be gangrelated.
Mondragon-Jimenez, of the 3100 block of West 27th Street, was taken to Mount
Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, authorities said. Police recovered eight spent shell casings from a 9 mm at the scene, authorities said.
Police pieced together the events from private and city video surveillance and eyewitness accounts, including a caller to 911 who spotted the getaway car fleeing the scene moments after hearing the event on a police scanner, according to prosecutors.
Authorities even located a city camera footage showing the 16-year-old later that night where he appeared to pantomime shooting a gun and then fell to the ground against a vehicle in a similar way to how MondragonJimenez did, prosecutors said.
Two of the witnesses, one who saw the younger teen laughing as he fled, also identified the teens from photos, authorities said.
Marubio denied bail for the 16-year-old, while Juvenile Judge Linda Pauel ordered the 15-year-old held in custody, according to state’s attorney spokeswoman Tandra Simonton. The 15-year-old is expected to return to court Monday, while the 16-year-old was scheduled to return July 27.