Prosecutors on Friday provided a clearer picture of what the public saw in CPD surveillance camera footage of a “Wild West” shootout that left one man dead, two other people injured, but no one charged with a crime in October.
The details emerged during a bail hearing for Thomas Dean, 20, who is charged with two counts of Class X unlawful use of a machine gun. Prosecutors did not charge him with firing a gun during the shootout, although they said he had gunshot residue on his hand, shell casings at the scene came from one of the weapons he is charged with possessing, and he admitted to being in one of the cars that fled the scene.
“There are dozens and dozens of gunshots fired,” Judge Mary Marubio recalled before ordering Dean held without bail Friday. “Seventy shots fired on a public street. You can’t get much more dangerous than that.”
New details
Assistant State’s Attorney Lorna Amado-Chevlin presented the first official narrative of the case in Marubio’s courtroom.
She said police responded to a call of a person with a gun involving two Dodge Chargers near the intersection of Austin Blvd. and Hirsch St. around 10:44 a.m. on October 1. Cops soon encountered a light blue Charger followed by a black Charger driving south on Mason Ave. with Dean sitting in the black Charger.
What happened next was captured on private and city-owned surveillance cameras, she said. You can follow along with a CPD video here.
The two Chargers stopped in front of a home on the 1200 block of North Mason as someone was hanging out of the home’s second-floor window, Amado-Chevlin began. Two gunmen emerged from the passenger side of the blue Charger and began firing at the home.
The passenger door of the black Charger — that’s where Dean was allegedly sitting — opened and “movement was observed” in the black Charger as a gunfight unfolded between people in the home and the men in the street, Amado-Chevlin said.
One of the shooters who stepped out of the blue Charger was shot in the head, chest, shoulder, and leg, and fell in the street. He died and was identified as Devlin Addison, 32, of Berwyn by the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Both Chargers drove around Addison’s body and left the scene as Chicago police officers approached in a car and on foot with weapons drawn.
Investigators found 27 rounds and a gun equipped with an extended magazine and an automatic fire switch under Addison’s body, Amado-Chevlin said. A total of 70 shell casings were found in the area, and ShotSpotter gunfire detection technology recorded bursts of 25, eight, and then one round in the area, she said.
Officers took an occupant of the home to Stroger Hospital for treatment of a gunshot wound to their leg and a shrapnel injury to their eye while the other occupants locked themselves inside, according to Amado-Chevlin. A SWAT team cleared the home two hours later and detained two people who were later released without being charged.
Drop and go
While that was happening, the black Charger pulled up to West Suburban Medical Center and dropped off Dean, who had a gunshot wound to his chest, Amado-Chevlin continued. She said that the Charger quickly left the hospital and then collided with a van on Austin Boulevard.
Video footage shows a man that Amado-Chevlin identified by name running from the crashed Charger, which had been reported stolen. Police found him hiding under a porch. Inside the stolen car, they found three guns and a backpack containing key fobs and a key fob programmer, she said.
He allegedly admitted to driving the stolen black Charger and told investigators that he took Dean to the hospital, she added.
Amado-Chevlin did not say if prosecutors charged the man with any crimes in relation to the stolen car, the guns, or the other items that police allegedly found. However, bond court records reviewed by CWB show that no one with his name appeared for a bail hearing on the following two days.
The three guns inside the Charger were a Glock 22, a Glock 23, and a Mini Draco, also known as an AK47 pistol. They were all converted post-market to generate automatic gunfire, Amado-Chevlin said.
DNA tests found genetic material from four people on the Glocks, and Dean is one of those individuals, according to Amado-Chevlin. His DNA was not found on the Mini Draco, she said.
Dean allegedly admitted that he traveled to Mason Avenue in a Charger driven by someone he knew as “Dre,” an informal name that aligns with the full name Amado-Chevlin gave as the car’s driver. He also told police he was shot in the shoulder, that Dre drove him to West Suburban Medical Center, and that he left his gun inside the Charger, Amado-Chevlin alleged.
More to come
Dean is the first person to face criminal consequences in connection with the incident after prosecutors initially refused to pursue charges against five men due to lack of evidence. A Chicago police report in October said prosecutors declined to press charges because participants in the gunfight were “mutual combatants,” but Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx denied that her office used that reason as she announced charges against Dean on Thursday.
Foxx said officials recently secured a search warrant against another target, and she expected additional charges to be filed in the days ahead.
As CWB reported Thursday, Chicago police officers took Thomas Dean into custody for questioning in the ongoing murder investigation stemming from October’s shootout on December 23. He initially ran from the cops, but he fell, and a 40-caliber handgun “fell from his person,” a prosecutor told Judge David Navarro during a Christmas Eve bond hearing.
The prosecutor added that Dean was adjudicated delinquent of aggravated vehicular hijacking with a firearm in 2018. His public defender said he had one child, worked part-time in a warehouse, and lived with his grandmother.
According to court records, Navarro ordered Dean held in lieu of $100,000 bail during the hearing, and Dean posted a 10% deposit bond and went home on December 27.
Amado-Chevlin confirmed details of that arrest on Friday and said the case is still pending.
She said Dean was charged with aggravated vehicular hijacking with a firearm as a juvenile in 2018 and was ordered to serve 14 months in juvenile corrections, but she could not determine the ultimate charge he was sentenced for.
