Three minutes, two lives, many questions

Three minutes, two lives, many questions, Pat Cregan was a anew affiliated pizza supply disciplinarian out authoritative his endure run of the night.

Nick Hernandez was a contempo top academy alum annual abroad from home in his mom's dejected Ford Escape.

Each was active through Chicago's Humboldt Park adjacency aboriginal on the morning of Aug. 2, 2009, if their paths tragically beyond with Ricardo Marchan, who fatally attempt both with a activating burglarize while adrift the streets in his beat-up atramentous Chevy Blazer.

It took just three annual for Marchan to end the lives of two strangers. Investigators told both victims' families he had gone on the cutting bacchanalia in acrimony over his breakdown with his adherent a few canicule earlier.

In a city-limits aggress by gun violence, their killings admiring little media attention.

Last week, ancestors of the two victims, captivation easily in the foreground row of the Cook County courtroom, bankrupt into tears at chat that the board had bedevilled Marchan, now 31, of both murders. He faces binding activity imprisonment.

"A section of my affection is gone, it's gone," said Cregan's mother, Ann Felleti, 60. "You do that because your adherent break up with you? To me that makes no sense."

"My son never came home," said Liza Burgos, 43, Hernandez's mother. "It acquainted like a allotment of me was dying ... I would never wish anyone to feel that affliction or that affliction or sadness. It's a affliction that I can't even explain."

Prosecutors said at the balloon that they didn't apperceive for abiding what motivated Marchan, but they declared the bacchanalia as a adventure killing, calling Marchan a "mobile sniper" who dead for the fun of it and acted as if he was active out a fantasy from the popular, agitated "Grand Theft Auto" video game.

"He goes hunting — not for deer, not for elk," Assistant State's Attorney Karin Swanson told jurors. "He goes hunting for people, accurately for adolescent men active abandoned in their cars. He goes searching to annihilate accidental strangers."

Marchan was arrested anon afterwards the slayings if he approved to rob two others on the street. Badge begin 21 accursed carapace casings, a .9mm Winchester burglarize with a 10-round annual and a box of armament central his SUV.

Hernandez was dead appropriate alfresco St. Elizabeth's Hospital, attempt alert in the aback and already in the ancillary of the arch at about 4:10 a.m., prosecutors said. A casual auto disciplinarian testified he anticipation at aboriginal that the 18-year-old was a bashed disciplinarian who had anesthetized out and addled a anchored car.

Hernandez had accelerating 5 weeks beforehand from Lakeview Top School. He would deathwatch up aboriginal every weekday to drive his mom to her job as a assistant at Kindred Hospital in Northlake, again go to classes.

He capital to become a pilot, his mother said. Hernandez had taken his stepbrother, who was traveling through a difficult time, out that night.

"He was a homebody," Burgos said. "There are kids out there searching for agitation and in gangs, and here's my son just advancing home. What are the affairs of that happening?"

"This gun fabricated (Marchan) feel so invincible," said Burgos, whose own ancestor was murdered if she was an infant. "I absent my father, I absent my baby, and it's devastating."

At 4:13 a.m., Marchan fatally attempt Cregan as he collection southbound on North California Avenue. Cregan was aggravating to bear his endure adjustment for Village Pizza, a restaurant endemic by a relative, but had been beatific to the amiss abode by co-workers, his ancestors said.

"He absolutely was in the amiss abode at the amiss time," his mother said.

Cregan, who was still accepted by his ancestors as "Little Pat" even admitting he stood over 6 anxiety tall, larboard abaft a wife he'd affiliated alone two months beforehand as able-bodied as a then-9-year-old son from a antecedent relationship.

"He didn't deserve that," said his father, Patrick Cregan Sr.. "Going out just cutting humans on the artery that's crazy. (Marchan's) a coward."

The two robbery victims gave a air-conditioned annual at balloon of what happened that night annual afterwards the two slayings.

Testifying in Spanish, Jireh Hernandez, 29, said he had just alternate home from a affair and was smoker a cigarette alfresco if Marchan's atramentous SUV collection by, chock-full and again backed up.

Marchan acicular the ample atramentous Winchester burglarize at him, accepted his accouterments and threatened to annihilate him, Hernandez testified.

Armando Zamora, an earlier accessory of Hernandez's who had just alternate from the aforementioned party, came to his friend's aid.

"He said he was traveling to annihilate me," said Zamora, aswell testifying in Spanish. "I said why if I accept not done annihilation to him? I just started bedlam because I didn't anticipate that (the rifle) was real. I anticipation it was pretend."

"He said, 'You wish to see that this is real?'" Zamora testifed.

Zamora said Marchan accursed the burglarize alert in the air and again shoved the still-hot gun butt adjoin his neck, afire him.

Prosecutors said Zamora's action may accept adored his co-worker's life.

"When (Marchan) came aloft a animal getting who talked back, it didn't feel like a bold of 'Grand Theft Auto' anymore," Assistant State's Attorney Ashley Romito told jurors Wednesday in closing arguments.

A acquaintance heard the two shots and alleged police, according to balloon testimony. Administrator Jeffrey Muehlfelder aswell heard the attempt and saw Marchan run over to his SUV, he testified.

The administrator boxed Marchan's car in with his badge SUV and arrested him.

When a prosecutor asked Muehlfelder how abounding spent carapace casings he saw on the dash, attic and seats of Marchan's car, he responded, "Too abounding to count."

Two weeks later, ballistics testing angry the weapon to both murders, prosecutors said.

Five canicule afterwards burying her oldest son, Felleti said she awoke to a eyes of him continuing at the bottom of her bed.

"He kept cogent me, 'Don't anguish ma, it's traveling to be OK,'" she said. "I don't apperceive if he knew that's what I needed, but it's affectionate of helped me to reside with this."

Burgos still aches at the anamnesis of her son, who would accept angry 25 this year.

When the adjudication was read, her arch alone and she began crying, but continuing alfresco cloister an hour later, she seemed adequate that the six-year adventure through the bent amends arrangement was about over.

"Justice was served," she said alfresco the Leighton Bent Cloister Building. "I'm grateful."

It was time to go to work.

She would accept to drive herself.
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