UPDATED: Thursday, June 17 at 9:20 a.m.
A 23-year-old Oak Lawn has been charged with killing 26-year-old David Garcia, of Downers Grove, early on June 14 in North Riverside.
Hussein Ali Matari is charged with first-degree murder and will appear in bond court at the Maybrook courthouse in Maywood on Thursday afternoon.
Police say the investigation remains open and acting Police Chief Christian Ehrenberg declined to release any other details related to the case, including where Garcia was shot and how his body ended up in the street at 25th Street and Hainsworth Avenue, about two blocks from where investigators were concentrating their efforts in the 2500 block of Westover Avenue.
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UPDATED: Wednesday, June 16 at 2 p.m.
North Riverside police say charges are pending against a suspect they have in custody for a homicide early on the morning of June 14 on the east end of the village.
Police responded to Hainsworth Avenue and 25th Street at 1:03 a.m. after receiving a report of a man lying the middle of the street. According to police, the man was bleeding and had been shot multiple times.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the man as 26-year-old David Garcia of Downers Grove, who was pronounced dead at Loyola University Medical Center at 1:37 a.m. The medical examiner ruled Garcia’s death from multiple gunshot wounds a homicide Tuesday afternoon.
Blood stains visible on the ground at the scene indicate the man was lying in the street near the stop sign at the southeast corner of the intersection. In a press release, police did not report whether or not the man was shot at that location, but it appears that the shooting probably happened elsewhere.
One resident who lives near the Hainsworth-25th Street intersection said he did not hear any gunshots and only realized something had happened when he woke up around 3 a.m. and noticed the flashing lights of police vehicles outside. He said none of his neighbors heard any gunshots.
However, a large number of police officers descended early Monday morning on the 2500 block of Westover Avenue, where blood stains remained visible in the alley north of 26th Street and west of Westover Avenue, and on the sidewalk and roadway leading south. Those blood stains were marked with tape, apparently by forensic investigators.
One resident of Westover Avenue said he woke up around 1:30 a.m. and observed a police squad car idling on Westover Avenue. That vehicle sped off a short time later, but police returned, closed off Westover Avenue at 26th Street and forensic investigators arrived. The street was closed off for about five hours, the resident said, from about 2:30 to 7:30 a.m.
“The whole place was covered with cops,” the resident told the Landmark.
In their press release, police did not mention the police activity on Westover Avenue, stating only that the offender had fled, that the incident appeared to be an isolated event and that police had taken someone into custody later on June 14.
This story has been changed to correct the name of the place where the victim resided.
