Chicago police plan to hold a press conference Monday morning to address weekend gun violence in the city that left at least six people dead and more than a dozen others wounded. Regina Waldroup reports.
The shooting death of a 15-year-old boy, who was killed while delivering newspapers with his stepfather Sunday morning on Chicago's Southwest Side, may have been the result of a mistaken identity, police said Monday.
Brian Jasso was shot and killed just before 7 a.m. Sunday in the 5100 block of West 47th Street in the city’s LeClaire Courts neighborhood, authorities said. Investigators said there were newspapers in the car where Jasso's body was found and they believed Jasso may have been delivering them at the time of the shooting.
"We think that was potentially a case of mistaken identity," Chief of Organized Crime Anthony Riccio said during a Monday morning news conference.
Jasso was sitting in the backseat of a Honda CR-V when it was rear-ended by a white vehicle, according to police and the Cook County medical examiner.
Family members said he was riding with his stepdad, Erik Campeano, a longtime newspaper delivery driver who was accompanying the teen along his route. Campeano said he was driving with Jasso near West 47th and Leamington when a white car flashed its high beams at their SUV.
The vehicle then began chasing the pair and when Campeano stopped, someone from inside the white car opened fire, he said.
Campeano said he pulled into a nearby BP gas station and told Jasso to run, but the teen wasn't responding. Jasso suffered a gunshot wound to the head and was pronounced dead at the scene.
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His mother said her son had picked up the paper route so he could make money to buy his sister a gift for her birthday.
"I want to see the killer's face," the grieving mother said.
Chicago Tribune publisher and editor Bruce Dold says the newspaper is "saddened and stunned by the news." The boy's stepdad is an independent contractor who delivers the Tribune and other newspapers.
Police said a motive was not clear, but family members said Jasso "did not have any enemies."
The teen was one of six people killed in weekend violence in Chicago, just before the holidays.
Riccio said authorities are investigating whether his killing was related to an earlier incident that left three people shot, two of them fatally.
In that shooting, which took place just before 10 p.m. Saturday in the 5900 block of South Richmond Street, a man and a woman were killed and another man was wounded when someone opened fire from the sidewalk as they drove by. Police said dozens of rifle casings were found at the scene.
An investigation into Jasso's death remained ongoing Monday, police said.
