A 59-year-old Chicago man has been charged with first-degree murder over a fatal shooting during a family argument in Greater Grand Crossing in September, Chicago police said. Coleman Jeffrey was arrested on Friday, November 6, in Greater Grand Crossing, and is accused of fatally shooting Mark Hurn, 54, on September 27 in the 500 block of East 76th Street, on the city's South Side.
Source: Chicago Sun-Times, reporting Chicago Police
Jeffrey was scheduled to appear in court on Sunday, November 8 — today — at the George N. Leighton Criminal Courthouse, 2650 S. California Avenue, the main criminal courthouse for Cook County. A first-degree murder charge is the most serious homicide charge under Illinois law, and the Sunday appearance is the first court step in a case that reaches back six weeks to the night Hurn was shot.
A family argument, and a mother's care
At the time of the shooting, police said it stemmed from a family argument. A witness told officers the fight was about the shooter and the care of his mother, according to the Chicago Sun-Times' reporting of the September investigation. Hurn was the boyfriend of the alleged shooter's sister — which is to say, on the police account, the man who was killed and the man now charged were connected through family, not strangers who met that night.
Hurn was shot in his chest, abdomen and legs, the Sun-Times reported from the September police account. He was 54 years old. No other injuries were reported in the accounts of the September 27 shooting published at the time or in the charge announcement this weekend.
Six weeks between the shooting and the charge
The shooting happened on September 27, but the murder charge was only announced this weekend, after Jeffrey's arrest on Friday in the same Greater Grand Crossing neighbourhood where Hurn was killed. Police have not, in the statements reported so far, explained what evidence led them to Jeffrey or why the arrest came six weeks later — whether it was witness cooperation, forensic work or something else. Those unanswered questions are normal at the charge stage, but they are the questions the court process is now expected to work through, in public, starting with Sunday's appearance.
Greater Grand Crossing is a South Side community area centred around 75th and 76th streets, several miles south of downtown Chicago. East 76th Street, where the shooting happened, is a residential street — this was, on the police account, a killing that grew out of a family dispute inside that community, not a street robbery or a gang shooting, and the charge has to be read in that light: an argument about the care of the accused's mother, a witness said, ended with the sister's boyfriend shot in the chest, abdomen and legs.
Coleman Jeffrey is charged, not convicted. Chicago police allege he shot Mark Hurn on September 27; he is presumed innocent unless and until the state proves the first-degree murder charge in court.
What happens next
After Sunday's appearance at the Leighton Courthouse, the case proceeds in the Circuit Court of Cook County, where prosecutors must prove the charge and the defence can test the police account — including the witness account of the family argument and the six-week gap between the shooting and the arrest. Police have announced no other arrests in connection with Hurn's death, and no trial date exists at this stage.
For the family at the centre of this case, the court process now splits along the same line the shooting did: the accused is the brother of the victim's partner, and the argument that police say preceded the gunfire was about the care of the accused's mother. Whatever the court decides about the charge, that family context — reported by police from the night of the shooting itself — is why this case has drawn attention beyond one South Side block.