More than six months after the humid, summer night when a stray bullet killed 7-year-old Ana Mateo near her Pilsen doorstep, police Sunday said they have charged a teenage gang member as the shooter.
The first-degree murder charge against Juan Garcia, 16, of the 2400 block of South Pulaski Road, was announced by Harrison Area detectives, who said they also are seeking an 18-year-old man in connection with the murder.
But the apprehension of an alleged Latin Counts gang member Friday brought little relief to family members at Ana’s modest house on West 18th Place.
“Someone arrested, it’s not better for me, myself, my family,” said Ana’s father, Federico Mateo, a metal polisher who emigrated from the Mexican state of Puebla. “For me, my little daughter, she’s not coming back.”
Ana was one of several children slain by the gunfire of reckless gang members last year. In August, she had just stepped outside her stuffy house with her mother to cool off on the sidewalk–which is now marked by a weather-beaten shrine–when she was shot.
On Easter Sunday last year, 7-year-old Ashlee Poole was shot on her porch by a man chasing people down the block after a fight over a gold chain. She survived. The fatal shooting six days later of 12-year-old Rene Guillen as he left a neighborhood cleanup came to symbolize a bloody Chicago spring.
By the end of May, the city was on pace for a second straight year of increases in slayings, while other major cities were riding a downward trend in violent crime.
But in June, the Police Department launched strategies that included saturation patrols to swarm violent neighborhoods.
By the end of the year, Chicago still led the nation with 598 slayings–30 of the victims under age of 16. Eleven were under the age of 8. Still, the city finished the year with the fewest homicides in 36 years.
Although several of the youngest victims died from child abuse, nearly all of the teens were killed in the streets by guns.
In Pilsen, police instituted Operation Just Cause, a crackdown on gangs that shoot children and police, using beat and tactical officers to target gang members for the smallest infractions. Yet while the initiative helped build intelligence on Pilsen gangs, police said, it failed to unearth a credible suspect in Ana Mateo’s slaying.
“That operation garnered a lot of intelligence,” said Lt. Nick Roti of the Harrison Area detective division. “Did it lead directly to this arrest? I would say probably not.”
Instead, the breaks in Ana’s case came from outside the city–first from southwest suburban Stickney and then from Toledo, Ohio, police said.
In early February, a fellow Latin Count arrested in Stickney on a “burglary-related” charge told police he knew the shooter, Roti said.
“He had concern for himself, of course, but he did feel bad that a little girl had to be a victim here,” said Stickney Police Chief John Zitek. “I credit him. Though, of course, he’s saving his own skin, as well.”
A week later, FBI agents in Toledo phoned to say another Latin Counts member had been arrested there on attempted murder and kidnapping charges, Roti said. He, too, named Ana’s shooter, police said.
Police said they started watching Garcia, a Collins High School junior. They arrested him at his lunch break Friday after he crashed an SUV at South Sacramento Boulevard and Roosevelt Road, a block from school.
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He was driving without a license, Roti said.
In August, police had said Ana’s killer and the two or three others with him at the time were members of the Party People gang and were trying to ambush a member of the rival Satan Disciples near a dead-end at 18th Place and Leavitt Street at about 12:30 a.m. Aug. 20.
But Sunday the focus was on the Latin Counts, and it remains unclear whether the intended target, who has talked with police, was in a gang or not, Roti said.
Despite a post-shooting vigil, announcements in churches and a widely circulated police bulletin, the hunt for Ana’s killer bogged down as potential witnesses stopped talking, police said.
“A lot of people out there knew about this case and they didn’t come forward initially, and that really hurt us,” said Detective Robert Rodriguez.
Alvaro Obregon, chairman of the Monroe District’s citizen advisory committee, said that the murder galvanized the neighborhood. But he counseled patience.
“It’s better that it took seven or eight months and gets the right individual than for you to wrap up the case in one month and send the wrong guy to jail,” Obregon said.
Federico Mateo, who lost his youngest daughter, turned his anger from Garcia to the suspect’s family.
“He’s just a kid,” Mateo said. “The responsibility is with the parents.”
Garcia’s mother started to cry when reached by telephone Sunday. “It just hit my family Friday,” she said. “I really have no comment.”
A bond hearing for Garcia is scheduled Monday at noon.