As rain subsided, friends and other neighbors started to come back out to the street.
“It’s been hours. He is still lying there,” said Laura Elizondo, who still had a can of beer in her hand after leaving a crumpled empty behind as she walked around the crime scene.
“Why are you not moving him?”
Several other people near Elizondo resumed the cursing and shouting that the rain previously helped halt.
“Stop it … There is a procedure,” said Carmen Galvan, another friend of Martinez, trying to calm down her angry friends. “If you can’t handle your drinks, don’t drink at all then.”
Elizondo and about three other people then turned to Galvan, yelling and cursing at her.
“Believe me, I wish (body removal workers) made it here an hour ago too,” said a nearby sergeant, trying to smooth the fight in front of him. “But we don’t control how they do it.”
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The shouting was interrupted by a police van coming through an alleyway that separated the group of police officers and the relatives.
A few moments later, around 3:10 a.m., a group of body removal workers finally walked up to Martinez’ body, getting ready to lift it up and take it to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Friends and family members went quiet for a few moments, staring at the crime scene in front of them.
A man, who walked up to the crime scene just a minute before, shook his head and arms. He hugged Galvan and covered his face with his hands.
“Oh, there is gonna be retaliation I tell you that much,” the man said to no one in particular as he looked past police officers, watching Martinez’ body carried away. He paced back and forth.
“Halo,” a man yelled at the other side of the crime scene, referring to the area’s name Halo City.
“Halo,” another man answered in the distance.
“Halo.”