When federal brokers arrested Ricardo Granadillo Padilla in Raleigh, North Carolina, final winter, homeland safety officers framed it as a dramatic break in considered one of Chicago’s deadliest mass shootings. An ICE press launch known as him a “suspected shooter,” linked him to Venezuela’s most infamous legal gang, and steered that justice for eight folks shot in Gage Park final December would possibly lastly be in sight.
“ICE Chicago captures shooters in December 2024 mass capturing tied to Tren de Aragua gang,” learn the headline on the company’s press launch.
However behind the scenes, the case apparently went nowhere. Nobody has been charged. Ballistic exams got here up empty. And months later, with out fanfare, federal authorities quietly put Granadillo on a aircraft again to Venezuela.
Round 2 p.m. on December 2, 2024, Chicago police rushed to the 3500 block of West 59th Road, responding to frantic calls about gunfire ripping by way of a celebration. 4 males and 4 ladies, all between the ages of 20 and 35, have been shot. Three males died: 32-year-old Osmer Angel Ferrer Oria, 26-year-old Hector Victor Miguel Sojo Vargas, and 28-year-old Jhan Carlos Blanquissett.
Witnesses mentioned the celebration featured a preferred Venezuelan DJ and drew dozens of friends.
Two months later, brokers from ICE and Homeland Safety Investigations descended on a modest three-bedroom home in Raleigh, North Carolina, on the lookout for Granadillo, who they described as a suspected member of the Tren de Aragua gang.
A Homeland Safety press launch trumpeted the arrest, claiming it was tied to a “mass murder investigation by the Chicago Police Division.” Fourteen undocumented immigrants have been detained through the raid, together with Granadillo, after most tried to expire the again door, a current affidavit filed by a Homeland Safety Investigations agent mentioned.
Inside the house, brokers discovered a stolen firearm. However in accordance with the affidavit, the weapon yielded no usable fingerprints and ballistic testing confirmed it wasn’t linked to any recognized shootings. With no bodily proof and no costs from Chicago prosecutors, the red-hot Chicago mass capturing angle shortly devolved right into a routine immigration matter.
An immigration decide ordered Granadillo faraway from the nation on August 19. A month later, on September 19, brokers escorted him onto a deportation flight from Harlingen, Texas, to Caracas, Venezuela. In a submitting in search of forfeiture of the seized gun, the federal agent famous that “his present whereabouts are unknown.”
Of the others arrested within the February raid, two have been later launched and stay at massive, the agent wrote. The remainder have been deported in March.
In the identical ICE announcement that labeled Granadillo a suspected killer, the company named one other man, 24-year-old Edward Martinez Cermeno, as “one other suspected shooter.” He, too, has by no means been charged.
What started as a extremely publicized arrest touted by federal officers as a step towards fixing a triple homicide has ended with silence. Practically a 12 months later, the Gage Park capturing stays unsolved, and the person as soon as portrayed as its central suspect is strolling free — in Venezuela.
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