A 51-year-old Chicago woman, Angela Thomas, has been charged with attempted murder in an October 14 shooting in the Avalon Park neighbourhood that left a 32-year-old man shot in the back and crashing his car beneath the Chicago Skyway, police said. Thomas was arrested on Thursday, November 12, and the Chicago Police Department published its charge release on Friday, November 13.
Source: Chicago Police Department
Police said investigators identified Thomas as the person who shot the man at about 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 14, in the 1600 block of East 82nd Street, in the department's 4th District on the South Side. She was arrested in that same block on November 12, and her address, as listed by police, is also in the 1600 block of East 82nd Street.
Source: Chicago Crime Chaser
According to earlier reports cited in the coverage, the victim was shot in the back, got into a vehicle and tried to drive away, before crashing into a steel support beam beneath the Skyway in the 7900 block of South Stony Island Avenue. He was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in serious condition. Police did not release his name, and his current condition was not available in Friday's reporting.
The charges, in full
Thomas faces two felony counts: attempted murder, under the statute covering a strong probability of death or great bodily harm, and aggravated battery by discharge of a firearm. These are charges, not findings of guilt: Thomas is alleged to have fired the shot, she has not been convicted of anything in this case, and she is presumed innocent unless prosecutors prove the charges in court.
What police have not said
Police did not say what led investigators to Thomas nearly a month after the shooting, what preceded the shooting, or whether she and the man know each other. No motive has been announced. Those unanswered questions — identification, relationship and motive — are the centre of the case the prosecution will have to build if it proceeds.
The corner where it happened
Avalon Park is a residential South Side neighbourhood, and the 7900 block of South Stony Island Avenue, where the wounded man's car came to rest, sits beneath the Chicago Skyway, the elevated toll road that carries traffic between Chicago and Indiana. The shooting block on East 82nd Street and the crash site under the Skyway are a short distance apart, which is why the case spans both a neighbourhood street and one of the South Side's busiest road structures.
Angela Thomas is charged, not convicted. Every account of the shooting in this report is the police account as published in the department's charge release and local reporting, and it has not been tested in court.
What happens next
A detention hearing was scheduled for Friday, November 13, at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, 2600 S. California Avenue. At a detention hearing a judge decides whether a charged person stays in custody or is released, and on what conditions, while the case moves forward. The outcome of Friday's hearing, and any next court date, had not been reported when this story was prepared.
For South Side residents — and for the Punjabi and wider South Asian families who live and run businesses along Chicago's South Side corridors — the case is a reminder that a month-old shooting can still produce an arrest long after the street has gone quiet. Anyone with information about the October 14 shooting is normally directed to Chicago police; the department's charge release is the public record of where the case now stands.