A 20-year-old man has change into the fourth individual charged within the homicide of rideshare driver Adriana Arocha-Duque, who was shot to loss of life throughout a theft in Humboldt Park the day after Christmas 2023.
Prosecutors now say Aireous Adams, 20, was a part of the crew that lured Arocha-Duque, 34, to the 4800 block of West Thomas Avenue earlier than killing her and stealing her SUV. Choose Antara Rivera ordered Adams detained pending trial.
Authorities have already charged Antwon Conyears, Kameron Freeman, and Derrius Younger in the identical case. A fifth man, Daone Feazell, averted prosecution solely as a result of he was shot and killed in June by a hid carry holder he tried to rob, based on prosecutors.
Investigators imagine Arocha-Duque’s homicide was a part of a string of robberies and carjackings focusing on rideshare drivers throughout the Close to West Facet that December. She and one other driver, 39-year-old Mohammed Al Hijoj, have been killed in separate assaults three weeks aside.
Prosecutors stated the December 26 killing started when Adams, Younger, and Feazell coordinated the crime utilizing an iCloud account stolen from one other sufferer. Feazell allegedly despatched Younger a Google Avenue View picture of a cul-de-sac on West Thomas Avenue, highlighting its lack of safety cameras and suggesting his close by house as a hideout after the assault.
Round 8:30 p.m., Arocha-Duque picked up the group in her Chevrolet Suburban within the 2100 block of North Leamington Avenue. Surveillance footage confirmed the SUV turning onto West Thomas, braking abruptly, after which crashing right into a parked automobile. Prosecutors stated one of many males shot Arocha-Duque at the back of the pinnacle.
The group ran to Feazell’s house, and one was seen carrying a gun, prosecutors stated. Investigators later recovered a spent shell casing inside Arocha-Duque’s automobile and a vape cartridge that allegedly bore Freeman’s DNA. A search of Conyears’ dwelling allegedly turned up a shredder stuffed with paperwork tied to different robberies. Prosecutors stated Conyears had 14 prior juvenile adjudications, together with tried homicide, two carjackings, and 11 armed robberies.
Conyears, Freeman, and Younger stay detained on costs of homicide, armed theft, and illegal restraint. Adams now joins them.
Freeman, in the meantime, can be charged with murdering Al Hijoj whereas he labored as an Uber driver simply weeks earlier. Prosecutors stated that case unfolded after a choose eliminated Freeman’s ankle monitor in November 2023, ending his digital monitoring on a stolen SUV case. Lower than a month later, he allegedly joined a gaggle that lured Al Hijoj right into a deadly ambush. The sufferer, a father of three who had immigrated from Jordan 15 years earlier, was shot a number of instances inside his Cadillac Escalade in Austin on December 3, 2023.
Prosecutors stated certainly one of Freeman’s accomplices in that assault, 18-year-old Zayin Kelly, by accident shot himself and dropped the homicide weapon whereas fleeing.
Days after that killing, Freeman pleaded responsible in his stolen automobile case and was positioned on probation with a requirement to earn his GED. As an alternative, prosecutors say, he helped orchestrate one other homicide.
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