A gun stolen from a local Wisconsin is linked to 27 shootings in Chicago

AdvertisementAdvertisement By Jeremy Gorner, Annie Sweeney and Rosemary SobolChicago Tribune | Sep 21, 2021at12:30 PM

With the solid snap of a crowbar, the hooded thief sent the glass from the display case crashing to the armory floor and quickly stuffed several pistols into his bag.

Among what was stolen that New Year's morning from a northern Wisconsin gun store was a 9mm light pistol with a black polymer grip and steel slide and a 4½-inch barrel.

On one side was stamped the pistol's unique serial number: YZC020. On the other, the logo of one of the most profitable and ubiquitous firearms companies in the world: Glock.

The Austrian pistol, Model 17, had been imported into the company's plant in Smyrna, Georgia, and then shipped to the gun shop, where it sold for as much as $400.

It took about 20 seconds for the gun and eight other people to slip out of the secure display case of a federally licensed firearms dealer and into the underground gun market.

In a little over a month she was on the streets of Chicago, where she would be shot at over and over again, linked to some 27 shootings before being taken off the streets. She was attached an extended magazine, which increases firepower.

In total, two dozen people were shot during its use in a handful of Chicago neighborhoods, two of whom died. A series of shootings took place in North Lawndale in the west of the city. Three of them in a single block.

The Tribune examined hundreds of documents obtained through open records requests to map out and understand the Glock's path to and through Chicago, conducting numerous interviews to learn how the gun moved through the city and listening to those whose lives were forever altered by its use.

The connections between the shootings were established by Chicago Police Department firearms technicians, who test and examine thousands of firearms, bullets and shell casings recovered each year to generate investigative leads for detectives.

The fact that a gun is linked by police to 27 shootings has shocked local law enforcement, who say it could be the largest number of firearm-related incidents in Chicago through a computer program ballistic imaging administered by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

“This is an extreme case,” said Richard Wiser, Chicago Police Detective Commander in the city's west, of the Glock 17. ) on a weapon. Sometimes a few more."

The trail of the Glock from that broken display case in Superior, Wisconsin, to its recovery during a street arrest, hints at a world where any firearm is a hot commodity, offering acceptance, protection, and power that drives violent street conflicts.

It is a trail of physical and life-changing pain for people, and a great financial cost to the city. Researchers have estimated that the cost of a single gunshot wound, including medical expenses, the purchasing power of the victims and the loss of businesses in the affected area, exceeds one million dollars.

The potential damage caused by a single handgun traveling across state lines should sound an alarm, considering the current rates of gun violence in Chicago and across the country, experts said.

“Guns don't grow on trees,” said Cassandra Crifasi, deputy director of the Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy at Johns Hopkins University. “They start somewhere and are exceptionally durable products and can last a long, long time. It's very important that we do everything we can to make sure that guns don't fall into the hands of people we know shouldn't have them. This pistol is proof of all the havoc that can be caused with a single weapon.”

As of the end of July, Chicago police said they had recovered more than 7,200 weapons in the city, 28% more than at this time last year.

“Most importantly, I want to get some of the guns back,” a Superior Police Department detective told the small-time felon and drug addict accused in the raid during questioning about the gun store robbery .

“Guns in the hands of bad people kill people,” he said. "Stolen guns do nothing but bad things."

First Tracking

Traffic stopped at a red light at the corner of 31st and State streets one night in February 2016 when gunshots were heard.

The first one. Then four or five more. Inside a vehicle, a 24-year-old man was shot just below the ear but survived.

The driver of a silver Honda Accord, also at the intersection, drove a few blocks and waited for police. A bullet had gone through the driver's side rear door.

Soon, at 31st and State streets, in front of the Illinois Institute, Chicago police worked the scene. They found some bullet casings and labeled them as evidence, sending them to the Chicago police firearms lab.

In the cramped laboratory inside the city's west facility, the casings were examined under a microscope by a technician before being entered into the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (NIBIN), the ATF-administered computerized system that analyzes high-resolution images of firearms evidence. .

The vast system constantly searches uploaded evidence to match bullet casings found at crime scenes to determine if they are linked to a recovered weapon. The ballistic evidence would face further testing before being taken to court.

Images of the 31st and State casings remained in the database, awaiting a possible match. They were the first sign of the use of the Glock in Chicago, although their whereabouts on the street would remain a mystery.

Many whose lives were altered by gun use would describe to the Tribune how it affected them. Others could not be found or refused to talk about it, like the man who was shot below the ear, saying that talking about what happened just wouldn't help.

“Chicago is a trap,” he said before hanging up.

Evidence of the weapon did not surface again until May of that year, when a 25-year-old woman sustained a minor head injury, apparently from shattered glass in a shooting in the 500 block of North Kedzie Avenue. Up to 18 shell casings were lying on a nearby sidewalk and alley.

Then the gun seemed to go silent again until mid-October, when the evidence trail lit up again.

At around 6:30 pm on October 16, multiple shots were heard at 47th St. and King Dr. Witnesses reported that a green Chevy Impala pulled up next to another car near the corner and someone inside the Impala Shooting.

The driver's side door of the other car was riddled with multiple bullet holes, and inside the car, a 24-year-old man had been shot in the hip.

Evidence recovered at the scene was matched against the stolen Glock in the NIBIN database.

Two days later, in the 4600 block of South Greenwood, a 29-year-old man driving southbound was shot in the head but was able to get to the University of Chicago Medical Center. Back at the crime scene, the bullet casings were again recovered and entered into the ballistics system, establishing another match.

And just one day later, on October 19, according to detective reports, the Glock turned up during an investigation into an even more serious shooting.

Detectives investigating the homicide of Eric Banks, a 25-year-old South Side man, killed in September of that year, located a car they believed to have been used in the fatal shooting.

The Buick, located on a vacant lot in the 5600 block of South Calumet Ave., had a fresh coat of green paint. And there was something on the outside of the car's windshield, a detective's notes said.

“Two spent shells were observed on the hood of the Buick's windshield,” the detective wrote in a supplemental report. "Upon closer inspection, the shells were found to be 9mm."

Although not related to other ballistics evidence found at the homicide scene, the tests determined that the shell casings on the car's windshield matched those on the Glock. The shell casings were added to the now-growing list of firearm evidence believed to be related to the same weapon.

By then, the gun had likely been given, sold, or loaned for use in Chicago mob violence. After using a gun, those involved often want to get rid of it to avoid any connection.

A search of the suspected getaway car in the Banks murder also revealed another link to the Superior area. Hidden inside the pocket of the driver's side door was mail addressed to the owner of the car at the St. Louis County Jail in Duluth, Minnesota, which is just over the river from the Wisconsin city, according to the detective's notes released. in the Tribune. .

The man, who was ultimately charged with Banks' murder as the getaway driver and is facing trial, has a conviction for selling drugs in Duluth, according to state court documents. He was not charged in connection with the robbery at Superior Shooters or the trafficking of any of the weapons taken that day. His attorney declined to comment.

ATF officials and Chicago police said it is unknown how the weapon got into Chicago.

The robbery suspect who was questioned by Superior Police, Dexter Leddy, was ultimately convicted of robbery in the raid. The Tribune could not reach Leddy, 27, who has lived in the Superior area, for an interview.

The Pace Picks Up

Over the next several months, Glock-related police violence increased sharply.

And the gun also took a geographical turn. Although it had been used primarily on the South Side, as of November 2016, shell casings linked to the weapon appear almost exclusively on the West Side.

It was linked to shootings in November, including two on the same block on South Kildare Ave.

On November 7, someone fired about eight shots, striking a parked Chrysler and wounding a 22-year-old man who was shot in the right armpit and later treated at Mount Sinai Hospital.

Eight days later, on the same block, 19-year-old Andre Williams had just come home from work and was walking his Shih Tzu puppy, Patches, when a car pulled up on the corner and then parked.

Williams stopped to talk to a friend when he noticed it. There was nothing unusual about the car until it suddenly sped up.

Then someone inside opened fire.

Williams heard a shot and fell to the ground. He then took cover, climbing under a car. However, he kept getting shot at, as his legs were sticking out into the street.

“I would say my upper body was under the car and then my legs were sticking out, so they kept shooting my legs,” he told the Tribune.

The burning sensation from the bullets was intense. After the shooting stopped and the car drove away, one of his friends pulled him out from under the vehicle. Williams's mother and sister ran up to him.

Williams had been shot in the left leg, left hip, groin, and buttock.

A calm Williams tried to reassure everyone that he was okay. She kept telling her mother that she was strong, and “I have this,” she recalled.

As he lay injured, he was talking to everyone, including the paramedics. Later, at the hospital, he even asked his brother to buy them coffee from a Dunkin' Donuts.

Williams would endure two surgeries, one on the day of the shooting and the other a day after. Doctors attached a rod to his injured leg with six screws and replaced his hip, Williams said.

Williams, now 24, said she probably won't be able to have children because of her injuries. He must wear loose clothing to avoid pressure where he was injured. He can only take quick showers, what he calls "bird baths," because the water can be too painful for his leg.

“It didn't break me. It didn't get over me. It hasn't stopped me from doing everything I want to do in my life, even though there will be issues and bridges I'll have to cross," Williams said. "You have to manage your life, work on it."

'You're trying to survive'

Even as Williams recovered from his surgeries, the Glock continued to be used all over West City.

Between December 5 and 7, 2016, there were four more shootings, including one in the eastbound lanes of the Eisenhower Expressway. A driver was injured by broken glass, and shell casings matching the weapon were scattered along with those from a second weapon over a two-block stretch of highway.

The next day, at 2:20 pm, a 35-year-old man arrived at Mount Sinai Hospital with a gunshot wound to the chest. He later told police that he was standing in the 1100 block of South Francisco Ave., outside the North Lawndale Safer Foundation, when a passenger in an Audi opened fire. Shell casings were later recovered, linking the Glock to another crime.

At around 9:20 p.m. that night, a 49-year-old man was shot multiple times behind his home in the 300 block of North St. Louis Ave. The man's girlfriend told police he had just left to a store when he heard five or six shots.

He managed to get upstairs for help despite being hit in the chest, left armpit, left bicep, right shoulder and right upper thigh. The man survived his injuries.

On a recent afternoon on the street, the block was the center of a meeting that community organizations hold with the neighbors to counter the violence.

In the middle of the street, children were playing on a jumper, others were throwing a soccer ball. A DJ dressed in a Chicago Bulls Scottie Pippen jersey played the “Cha Cha Slide.” Full-court basketball games with referees were taking place in a park, where a few dozen people had also gathered for outdoor meals.

Damien Morris, senior director of violence prevention at Breakthrough Urban Ministries, said it was “amazing” that the Glock was used so often and could cause so much destruction.

But as someone who has long worked in Chicago to reduce violence, Morris understands why a weapon like that would remain in circulation in the world of underground streets for so long.

“There may be a number of reasons why that same weapon has been in rotation,” Morris explained. “Sometimes people sell it because once they commit a crime, they want to get rid of the gun and then they can sell it for less than what it costs on the market. And so now you have that gun everywhere."

He also knows the desperation behind it all.

“People don't ask questions,” he said. "The mindset of people at risk or high risk is, 'I'd rather be caught with that than without it.' Therefore, they are not going to ask any questions if they feel that the weapon is going to protect them. They're not going to ask, 'Hey, did you do something with the gun?' ... You're trying to survive."

Glock-related damage continued into 2017. On January 10, a 22-year-old man was shot in the back at 15th St. and Kolin Ave., in North Lawndale. He told police that someone jumped out of a vehicle and opened fire.

'You Know God Loves You'

On a rainy April 10, 2017, two gunmen got out of a silver Pontiac Grand Prix in the 4300 block of West 15th St. and opened fire on a sidewalk near Franklin Park, where a group had gathered.

It was just a few blocks up the Kildare stage that Andre Williams was shot.

Fontaine “B.J.” Sanders, a 19-year-old college student, was struck and killed, and another man was injured.

According to a police report, a witness took a look at one of the pistols used by the shooters. It was black, with an extended clip.

Police collected sixteen 9mm shell casings from the street and examined them in the firearms lab for links to other crimes, and got what was becoming an all-too-familiar response. One of the weapons used that day was the Glock, connected by then to a long series of shootings around the city.

Sanders had just finished a game of basketball with his friends at the park. He loved basketball and the Los Angeles Lakers was his favorite team.

In the spring of 2016, Sanders was about to complete his associate's degree in kinesthesiology at Robert Morris University and had a mentor at a neighborhood social service organization who had helped him get a job as a cleaner.

When he finished playing catch that April afternoon on his spring break, Sanders called his mother to tell her he was planning to come home and get money to go out to lunch with his friends, he told the Tribune.

Corniki Bornds urged her son to stay home once he arrived.

“Come home,” Bornds urged his son, who lived a few blocks from the park. "Your grandmother is cooking you something."

That was the last conversation they had. Bornds, who was napping, was awakened shortly after by the blare of sirens. Friends and family called her and went to her house to tell her that she had to go to Mount Sinai Hospital.

There, Bornds attended to his son, who had been shot in the head.

“You know God has you,” he recalled telling her, holding up her hand. "Are you OK. Are you OK".

Everything changed after he died the next day, he said.

“I've been trying to get back to my normal routine and I can't,” Bornds told the Tribune.

On April 10 of this year it was rainy again. Mylar balloons swayed in front of Grace Memorial Baptist Church, just two blocks from where Sanders was shot.

Inside, the sanctuary was decked out in Los Angeles Lakers purple and gold for a white-tablecloth scholarship luncheon honoring Sanders. Bornds took care of some final touches, moving a table and having young men help carry the food, before changing clothes for the event.

Bornds has overcome her grief with the support of other mothers who have lost their children and has found ways to help others in her community facing the same type of gun violence. She runs a prayer service on Facebook and once a month hosts a support group called Help Understanding Grief, or HUG. And each year, he offers small stipends to a handful of students on his son's behalf to help pay tuition costs, in part because B.J. he was struggling to pay his last school bills when he was shot.

One recipient used the money to pay outstanding fees so she could walk her class to graduation in cap and gown. Another invested the money in his college dorm fees.

“I made a promise after losing my baby that no child I know would not go to school because of money,” Bornds told the crowd that day. "...So today we're going to honor some young people...and let them know that there are people pushing them."

Trouble Corner

As 2017 wore on, the Glock continued to make its presence felt.

A 17-year-old boy was found lying on his front lawn in the 2700 block of West Polk St., his jeans soaked in blood. A 55-year-old man reported being shot in the 700 block of South Oakley Blvd.

Once again, the evidence collected at both scenes was related to the weapon.

On May 9, the Kildare block where Williams had been shot months before was struck once more. Two people, a 25-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman, were shot.

It was the third shooting in six months on the block, a street lined with small row houses that sits between the T-intersection on the north and Unity Park on the south.

One night in June, the neighbors met to make plans for the rest of the summer.

The group sat on benches and talked about how they had mapped out the most dangerous areas of North Lawndale so residents could spend time together outdoors in those areas.

As the conversation progressed, Gerald Bryant, better known as “Mr. Bryant” in the neighborhood, she sat near him, her long legs tucked under a small chair, as he rolled sausages over the searing heat of a grill. Old school R&B was playing on the speaker.

Bryant oversees lunch and recess at Roswell B. Mason Elementary, which adjoins the park. In the summer he runs basketball leagues on the outdoor courts.

Bryant was upbeat, excited and ready for summer that night. His family has been in North Lawndale for decades and he loves the place.

“There's so much good here,” said Bryant, 67.

Bryant knows the area's problems. He says that he sees cars racing toward the little strip near the park and knows what's going on in the alley.

It's down there where the kids on the block sell what they have to sell: a “loose” cigarette or maybe narcotics.

“That corner has always been a rush corner,” he said.

Some argue that this is the only job young people can get. Many, including Bryant, agree that he contributes to Chicago's gun violence.

“I've lost so many kids from there,” Bryant said, addressing his son, who helps his father with the basketball program. "What do you think is the number of children that have been killed in Mason that we know of?"

“More than a hundred probably,” replied the young Bryant.

The number hung in the air, with no hint of exaggeration, as four girls fell onto the nearby lawn.

But Bryant said he's not mad at the youngsters on that end. He knows that they were born in those circumstances.

The solutions are legitimate economic opportunities to replace the corner hustle, Bryant said. Otherwise, weapons will continue to be passed from gang to gang and used over and over again as needed, and retaliation from one shooting to another.

Until that happens, Bryant will continue to run his basketball program, now 12 years old, where all are welcome.

Swedish Fish and Swisher Sweets Cigars

In May 2017, the Glock's life on the streets of Chicago was coming to an end.

But the damage wasn't quite over.

On May 16, Jonathan Green, 34, and his brother walked out of a North Lawndale convenience store with Sprites, Swedish Fish and Swisher Sweets cigars.

As the couple walked, a van with three people inside pulled up and the group said something before the vehicle drove away. The brothers kept walking, but the van approached again a short time later, two of the passengers covering their faces with masks.

One got out of the car with a handgun equipped with an extended magazine. He aimed at Green, fired twice, and shot Green in the leg. Green's brother got away when the second passenger got out of the car and opened fire in his direction, but missed.

After Jonathan Green was shot the first time, one of the passengers ran up to him to shoot him several more times. The passengers then returned to the van and drove away.

Green's brother heard as many as 14 shots. Police recovered more than a dozen bullet casings at the crime scene, some near a pool of blood.

“It looked like he tried to run home,” Green's widow, Darcell Williams, told the Tribune of her husband. "This is how he was lying on the ground."

Williams, 35, couldn't think of any logical reason for her husband to die the way he did, and she has a more chilling idea about what happened.

“I think a lot of murders around here happen simply because people are like, 'Oh, we're bored. Let's kill him,' you know? Things like that,” Williams said. “Because it didn't bother anyone. He walked everywhere."

Williams and her children still have a party every March 21 for her birthday. The children also visit the block where he was killed on the anniversary of his death to release balloons in his memory.

Green's aunt, Jackie Green, said Jonathan didn't finish high school but did get his GED. He was good at math and worked with her as a tax preparer, Green said. As a child, he joked, his family nicknamed him "Goo" because it was the sound he made when he struggled to pronounce certain words.

In her living room, Jackie Green sat surrounded by sketches she had drawn over the years, including one of movie star Al Pacino in “Scarface,” another of comic book legend Richard Pryor, and one of Jonathan wearing sunglasses.

“It still looks like he was killed that day,” Green said. "It's like the pain never goes away."

At the time of Green's shooting, the Glock had already been used in more than two dozen crimes in Chicago.

Three weeks later, she was finally taken off the street.

'Who's gonna protect us?'

Nearly 18 months after the robber in Superior pulled the Glock from a display case, the gun slipped down a man's pants during a police stop routine in Chicago's West Garfield Park neighborhood on the west.

It was July 26, 2017, and Cory Stone, 29, was sitting on the floor of a minivan that was parked, doors open, in the 4300 block of West Gladys Ave. Chicago police officers dressed in civilian clothes they surrounded the vehicle to question Stone and others in the van about the vehicle's missing registration tag, a traffic stop that Stone's attorney would later unsuccessfully challenge.

As Stone got to his feet, an officer behind him saw a gun-shaped object sliding down Stone's gray sweatpants, according to police body camera footage used during the arrest.

“Gun!” the officer said urgently. "Gun! Gun!".

“What's wrong?” Stone asked, surprised, as the officers grabbed him. An officer warned him that he was recording his interaction with the police.

“I'm not going to do anything,” Stone said. "I'm not going to do anything, sir. I'm not going to do anything at all."

An officer grabbed Stone and with one hand pushed the pistol up to Stone's ankle and pulled off his pants. He had attached what appeared to be an extended magazine.

It was a Glock 17. And would later be inventoried, along with its serial number: YZC020. Chicago police firearms technicians tested the pistol, collecting spent shell casings and then comparing them to all firearm evidence in the NIBIN system.

A computer search produced the result. A weapon that had plagued the city for over a year has finally come off the streets.

A few months later, on October 12, Ballistics Information Alert No. 2016-640S was issued, and the findings were detailed in a chart that required a full page to capture the chaos it had left in its wake.

"Case of Shooting with Person Shot-Central Area", reads the details. “Case of Criminal Damages-Northern Area... Case of Shooting with No Person Shot-Central Area. Case of Homicide-North Area”.

And so it goes on and on.

Stone faced federal charges for possessing the weapon and served approximately two and a half years in prison. He was not connected to any shooting involving the weapon.

Stone is out of prison now, and when the Tribune tracked him down this summer, he was reflective and working to put that life behind him.

She had moved into a new apartment and got married. He was helping his wife run a fashion clothing line and had opened a beauty salon.

As for the Glock, Stone said he carried it in 2017 for protection.

In 2016, Stone was the victim of gun violence, surviving a serious shooting that required hours of surgery and left him, to this day, with a colostomy bag. Also that year, close family friends, twins he considered brothers, were shot dead.

Stone, who said she has since sought counseling, said she now believes the decision to carry a gun was also influenced by having experienced other trauma and loss at the time, including watching her brother die of cell anemia. sickle cell at home after trying to resuscitate him with cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

In July 2017, Stone said he felt insecure and wracked with grief, like he was "losing my mind." And tempers on the street today, Stone said, are heating up much faster.

“If the police haven't solved the murder of the twins, they haven't solved my incident, who will protect us?” Stone wondered.

“My intention,” he explained. "It was to protect my family."

Stone said he got the gun from the street. And that investigators interviewed him about the Glock, pressing him for details about the numerous shootings related to it. He said he told them the same thing he told the Tribune: He doesn't know the person he got the gun from. I also didn't know anything about the history of the gun on the street.

No one has been charged in the gun-related shootings, the Tribune has found, except in the murders of Sanders and Green.

Neither the Glock nor any of the firearm evidence associated with it have yet been used in a trial.

A link established through computerized imaging cannot be used in court. The test results would only be used at trial if Illinois Police confirm a match through a careful, hand-drawn examination of the evidence itself, which they have so far done for 10 shots for the Glock in question.

The gun that caused so many people pain now sits in evidence space along with countless others in the Leighton Criminal Court building at 26th St. and California Ave.

Wait, perhaps, another moment, this time while a prosecutor holds it out for a future juror to see.

MOST VIEWED

By Thursday: We visit Superior, Wisconsin to see the gun store and how the aftermath of the 2016 robbery was emblematic of a crime problem that has caused guns to flow into Chicago and the drugs to the north of Wisconsin.

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