Reputed gang member charged in Friday shooting of ATF agent
May 9, 2018 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
A reputed gang member was charged with shooting a federal agent after surveillance cameras captured him in the area where shots were fired early Friday in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood, according to a criminal complaint.
The complaint did not indicate, though, that the cameras showed the suspect, Ernesto Godinez, firing a gun.
An agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was shot in the face early Friday as he walked near 44th Street and Hermitage Avenue, not far from Davis Square Park,.
ShotSpotter technology determined that about seven shots had been fired, according to the complaint.
The wounded agent was part of an undercover task force that was “covertly replacing” a court-approved tracking device on a suspect’s vehicle, according to the eight-page complaint.
Dozens of ATF agents packed the courtroom Tuesday as Godinez, who turns 28 Wednesday, made his initial appearance in the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Maria Valdez ordered Godinez, a reputed Almighty Saints gang member, held in custody until a detention hearing May 17. He was charged with forcibly assaulting an ATF agent with a deadly weapon and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Godinez’s older brother, Manuel, was shot to death last December in a rifle attack just around the corner from where the agent was wounded, according to police sources. Another brother, Rodrigo, was described in a Chicago police alert last fall as a leader in the Almighty Saints gang.
Federal prosecutors said they would seek to have Ernesto Godinez held without bond as a danger to the community and a risk to flee.
Godinez’s criminal background includes a charge of attempted murder for a shooting in June 2011 in the Back of the Yards, but he ended up pleading guilty in 2015 to aggravated discharge of a firearm for that offense as well as aggravated unlawful use of a weapon for an incident in March 2012, both felonies, court records show.
He also has misdemeanor arrests for having contacts with reputed gang members, reckless conduct, aggravated assault, marijuana possession and criminal damage to property, but most of those charges were thrown out, according to the records.
Godinez’s lawyer, Lawrence Hyman, told the judge that he accompanied Godinez as he surrendered to authorities Monday night.
Godinez, wearing dark glasses and an orange jail jumpsuit in court, kept his hands clasped behind his back and nodded silently when the judge asked him if he understood the charges. Valdez then instructed him to answer out loud.
As he was led from the courtroom, Godinez paused to scan the courtroom gallery as agents glared back at him.
Moments before the agent was wounded in the face at 3:18 a.m. Friday, two surveillance cameras captured Godinez in the area where the shots had orginated, according to the complaint. A camera also caught Godinez running back into his residence “right after shots were detected in the area,” the complaint says.
Just minutes before the shooting, various surveillance cameras in the area captured Godinez leaving his residence in the 4300 block of South Wood Street — just a few houses north and east of where agents were working — and cutting through a gangway to an alley along Hermitage, according to the complaint.
At 3:19 a.m., police ShotSpotter sensors detected at least seven shots being fired from the alley. The agent was struck in the face as he was walking just south of the alley, according to the complaint. Another bullet was found lodged in a tree.
After the shots were fired, private security video captured Godinez running west across the alley and then south on Wood before going back into his home, according to the complaint. Four minutes later, surveillance footage showed Godinez leave his home, the complaint says, adding that he was picked up by someone driving a dark-colored vehicle and left the scene.
The ATF agent, who is in his late 20s and is part of a joint anti-gun task force with Chicago police and Illinois State Police, was the fourth law enforcement officer wounded in the past year in an area of the South Side where warring gangs have been stepping up their firepower. The Almighty Saints and La Raza, rival street gangs in that neighborhood, have used military-style rifles, though the agent was not shot with a rifle.
The agent, who suffered a wound that caused damage near one of his eyes, was taken by a law enforcement vehicle to Stroger Hospital.
A Chicago police officer returned fire but didn’t hit anyone, sources said.
The ATF agent’s shooting sparked a massive manhunt and the offer of a $61,000 reward.
“We will find you,” Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said at a Friday news conference. “We will knock on every door, talk to every witness, watch every piece of video and analyze every piece of evidence. Believe me, you will not get away with this.”
Noting that four officers have been shot in a year, he added, “Do you think that escapes us? Because it doesn’t.”
The FBI and ATF have each offered $25,000 toward a reward for information in the case. The U.S. Marshals Service has committed $10,000 and community activist Andrew Holmes has offered $1,000.
Celinez Nunez, special agent in charge of Chicago’s ATF field office, pleaded with the public “to help us bring the assailants who are responsible for this to justice.”
“Agents were in the neighborhood of the Back of the Yards conducting their investigation and doing what they do every day and protecting our community when they were ambushed,” she said at the news conference. “I was born and raised here in Chicago.”
In Back of the Yards, ATF agents have teamed with Chicago police to investigate gang-related rifle shootings that have become more common over the past two years. The Tribune has reported that more than 140 people were shot — 50 of them fatally — from fall 2016 to the end of 2017 by gang members wielding rifles as their use spread across the South and Southwest sides.
The area where the agent was shot has been a stronghold of the Almighty Saints gang for more than 50 years, according to law enforcement sources.
The Almighty Saints traditionally feud with the La Raza street gang, whose members are mainly concentrated farther south in Back of the Yards, the sources said. But the Saints also have been in conflict with other gangs farther west in the Brighton Park community and surrounding areas.
Chicago Tribune’s Peter Nickeas contributed.
jgorner@chicagotribune.com
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
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