Six years ago this week, a fatal police shooting sparked protest and drew national attention on Waukegan. With the passage of time, the attention inevitably waned, but the charges against the former officer are still working their way through the court system.
Dante Salinas, the former Waukegan police officer charged with second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Marcellis Stinnette, is scheduled for trial on Jan. 25 in Lake County Court. Jurors will ultimately decide whether Salinas committed a crime or acted appropriately when he fired on a car being driven by Stinnette’s girlfriend.
In announcing charges against Salinas in 2022, State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said the shots Salinas fired that October night were unnecessary and illegal.
“No one is above the law,” Rinehart said at the time.
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Stinnette was 19 when he died in the early moments of Oct. 21, 2020, shot as he rode with Tafara Williams, his girlfriend and the mother of their child. She was also wounded in the shooting.
The couple had been talking in Williams’ parked car on Liberty Street late that night when a Waukegan police officer approached them. The officer, who recognized Stinnette, was standing alongside the car talking with the couple when Williams suddenly drove off.
The officer radioed for assistance, and Salinas responded. He located the car and chased it for several blocks. Williams failed to negotiate a turn and ran off the road at the corner of Martin Luther King Drive and Helmholtz Avenue.
Video released by Waukegan police in 2020 showed Salinas pulling up to Williams before she put the car in reverse. She backed into a small brick building across the intersection as Salinas exited his squad car and fired a half-dozen times, striking Stinnette and Williams as they drove away.
The officer had not activated his body camera, depriving authorities of a visual record of the shooting. That failure to turn on the camera, a violation of department policies, was cited by Waukegan police when Salinas was fired days later.
Almost two years after that, Lake County prosecutors lodged second-degree murder charges in the case, alleging that Salinas’ life was not in danger when he fired, and that he had an unreasonable belief that he was acting in self-defense.
Prosecutors charged Williams with aggravated fleeing and eluding. Her attorneys on Wednesday said the charges against her were based on a falsified police report and that the State’s Attorney’s Office was aware of the issues with the report when prosecutors took her case before a grand jury in 2022.
The officer who first encountered Stinnette and Williams that night, James Keating, told Stinnette he was under arrest, a statement that was false, according to the Blake Horowitz Law Firm, which is representing Williams.
Keating was later fired for including false and misleading information in his report, the law firm said.
“Ms. Williams was the target of an arrest attempt that Keating’s own police chief found had no legal justification, and that Keating had falsified,” the law firm said in a statement Wednesday. “That encounter left Ms. Williams shot and Marcellis Stinnette dead. Prosecuting her is not justice.”
Salinas was also charged in 2022 with battery and misconduct for an unrelated incident in which he repeatedly hit an intoxicated man during an on-duty incident, according to authorities. He was acquitted in a bench trial on the battery charge, but convicted of misconduct.
He was sentenced to 60 days in jail, along with probation, but has not yet served the jail term as his attorneys have sought an appeal. He remains on bond as he awaits trial. Attempts to contact his lawyer this week were unsuccessful.
In a statement about the Blake Horowitz Law Firm’s comments, the Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office said, “Our office plans to file a response to their motion. We cannot comment any further on any of the allegations since this remains a pending case.”