CHICAGO — Illinois State Police investigators say a 22-year-old Chicago man shot and killed a driver on the Stevenson Expressway in mid-February, about ten days before he allegedly killed another man in Chicago. CWBChicago reported last month that the accused man, Nicholas Samudio, was suspected of killing yet another man in December 2020, but Chicago police detectives did not believe they had enough evidence to bring charges against him.
In the latest allegations, ISP said Samudio shot and killed Humberto Marin-Garcia, 28, as they drove separate vehicles on the Stevenson Expressway near Ashland on February 16. Marin-Garcia’s pregnant wife was riding in the passenger seat and escaped injury.
State police investigators compiled extensive video evidence to support the allegations against Samudio, according to an ISP statement. Samudio was already being held without bail in the Cook County jail on a separate murder allegation when ISP announced charges this week.
Ten days after Marin-Garcia was killed, Samudio allegedly shot and killed Tomas Villa in the 2700 block of West 18th Street. Prosecutors said Villa parked his car and started walking home around 2 a.m. when a man named Moses Maldonado opened fire on him from the front passenger seat of a nearby Chrysler. Villa dove for cover between two parked cars.
Samudio got out of the Chrysler’s back seat and shot Villa “several times” while he was on the ground as Maldonado continued firing at Villa from the car, prosecutor Anne McCord said during Samudio’s bail hearing last month.
Chicago police detectives tracked the Chrysler’s movements before and after the shooting and located surveillance video from a liquor store and another location that helped them identify Samudio and Maldonado, said McCord.
Several hours after the murder, the Chrysler sped away from Chicago police detectives who tried to pull it over. Samudio threw a gun from the car as the chase progressed, and police later determined that the weapon was fired during Villa’s murder, McCord said.
But that wasn’t the first time Chicago police homicide detectives eyed Samudio in a murder case.
Around 1 a.m. on December 30, 2020, Jean Carlo Cobian was found lying in the street in the 3400 block of South Archer with a gunshot wound to the back of his head. Cobian’s car was parked nearby, and his family said he was coming home.
“I thought it was an accident, like, somebody ran him over, you know,” his mother told NBC Chicago at the time. “I didn’t expect someone shot him. When the detectives told me the following day, I was like, they shot him?”
Six weeks later, Chicago police arrested Samudio after they allegedly found a bullet inside his bookbag while they investigated a double-parked car in the 2800 block of South Sawyer, according to CPD records.
But the officers said they had another reason for arresting Samudio, too, writing that he had been “positively identified as taking part in the murder of” Jean Carlo Cobian.
He was not charged, though. Detectives found “insufficient evidence to present [a] felony case” to prosecutors, the police report said.
That was the 17th time Chicago police had arrested Samudio since he turned 18 about three years earlier. He has never been convicted of any crime, prosecutors say.
Several days after CWBChicago first reported the lack of evidence in Cobian’s death, Cook County Crime Stoppers announced a reward of up to $15,000 for information that leads to charges in the murder. The offer remains active until mid-May.