Chicago — A 21-year-old man has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for killing a Northside College Prep student on the Northwest Side nearly four years ago.
Luis Castejon was 17 when he was accused of shooting 17-year-old Emanuel Gallegos to death in the 4400 block of West Addison in February 2019. Prosecutors charged him as an adult.
Gallegos, a high-performing student at one of the city’s best public schools, rode along as a friend drove to pick up a third person at Schurz High School, 3601 North Milwaukee. Outside Schurz, Castejon approached one of Gallegos’s friends and asked for his gang affiliation.
The boy denied being a gang member and got into the car with Gallegos and the other person.
As the vehicle pulled away, Castejon fired on the car while yelling gang slogans, striking Gallegos twice, prosecutors said.
“I feel broken to know that this guy who was taller than me but still a kid died in my arms,” the driver, Steve Jaimes, told ABC7 in 2019. “He had a lot of goals, and they just got robbed from him. They just got robbed from him.”
Moments before the shooting, Castejon brandished a gun in a video he posted to Snapchat. Police released images from that video to the public as detectives tried to identify the killer.
On Wednesday, Judge James Linn sentenced Castejon to 34 years in prison for Gallegos’ murder and six consecutive years for attempted murder. The judge also sentenced him to a concurrent four years for aggravated discharge of a firearm into an occupied vehicle.
Castejon has not yet been transferred to the Illinois Department of Corrections, so his estimated parole date is unavailable.
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