Adolfo Ramirez told police he heard a gunshot go off in his kitchen in Aurora and turned to see his friend, Angel Reyna, wounded on the floor.
That’s where paramedics found 25-year-old Reyna on the morning of Sept. 19. He died an hour later at the hospital of a bullet to the chest.
According to police, they arrived to find leftovers of a night of drinking and drugs: empty Budweiser bottles, a finished-off bottle of cognac and a “powder-like” substance formed into a line on the kitchen table. A dollar bill rolled up like a straw laid on the floor nearby, as did a .22-caliber revolver and one shell casing, police said.
“Ramirez stated the gun went off by itself from under the table and fired a bullet into Angel’s chest,” an Aurora police detective wrote in a search warrant affidavit used to further search Ramirez’s Monomoy Street residence last month.
Ramirez, 24, is charged with armed violence in connection to Reyna’s death, and remains held in Kane County Jail on $753,000 bail. He was initially charged with possession of a controlled substance and was free on bond when prosecutors added the Class X felony count. Ramirez is scheduled to return to court on Oct. 29.
Aurora police believe the shooting to be accidental, but the investigation remains open, police spokesman Dan Ferrelli said Thursday.
Ramirez and Reyna were the only two in the kitchen at the time of the shooting after what police said was several hours of cocaine and alcohol use. Ramirez told police he had shown Reyna the gun, which he said was for protection, at some point prior to the shooting. Reyna even handled the gun before Ramirez took it back and put it in the kitchen, according to the affidavit. He said he put the gun on a bench under the kitchen table.
“He saw the gun on the floor and could not explain how the gun fired,” the detective wrote.
The affidavit states an autopsy ruled out suicide and noted the gunshot did not travel in an upward direction from the floor, but instead from “the direction where Adolfo was sitting.”
Dan Campana is a freelance writer for The Beacon-News
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