Prosecutors have charged a federal inmate with committing two murders on the city’s Far North Side in 2015, Chicago police said today.
Officials extradited 25-year-old Harvey Pitts from Kentucky where he was serving an 84-month sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Police on Friday said Pitts is responsible for killing a 23-year-old man in the 7100 block of North Clark on Feb.25, 2015, and another 23-year-old man in the 2200 block of West Thome on Nov. 26, 2015.
Those dates align with the slayings of Albert Turnage and Jontaye Walker, according to contemporaneous news reports.
Police said in Feb. 2015 that a man stepped out of a white minivan, walked up to Turnage, and shot him in the chest around 4:10 a.m., DNAInfo reported at the time. A second man was also shot.
Walker died in a similar attack, according to details reported in 2015 by the Chicago Tribune.
The paper said Walker was standing outside when someone pulled up in a green minivan and fired shots around 1:20 p.m. Several rounds struck Walker and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
“Lifelong criminal”
In March 2018, a federal judge sentenced Pitts to 84 months in prison for having a handgun in his vehicle in Skokie, according to court records.
Federal prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum that Pitts is a “lifelong criminal” who committed his first violent crime at the age of fourteen. At the time of his arrest in the Skokie case, Pitts was 23 and had already amassed eleven convictions with 18 other arrests, according to the filing. He repeatedly violated the terms of probation and parole, an assistant U.S. attorney wrote.
His previous convictions include aggravated battery of a police officer, possession of a firearm by a gang member, aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, and possession of a stolen motor vehicle.
Pitts, now charged with two counts of first degree murder, is due in bond court this afternoon.
