CHICAGO — Two Uptown men are getting a fresh start after their attorneys, using the city’s own video footage, proved they were not responsible for robbing a man in Uptown last summer.
Omareon Coleman and Samuel Gaines, both 19 at the time, had never been arrested before Chicago police officers stopped them for questioning and the intoxicated victim identified them as the robbers.
Incredibly, their attorney said, two 16-year-old boys also charged with the robbery were the actual robbers, but their charges were dismissed within two weeks of the incident.
Around 9 p.m. on July 17, the 60-year-old victim flagged down a Chicago police squad car to report that he had just been jumped, beaten, and robbed of $25 in an alley behind the 4400 block of North Malden, a CPD report said.
Prosecutors said the group kicked and punched the man in the head and body before taking his cash. The juveniles also robbed the man at gunpoint, according to CPD. EMS transported him to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center for examination due to his complaints of head and back pain.
The cops found several people in the alley and arrested Gaines, Coleman, and the juveniles after the victim identified them as the assailants.
Shortly before fingering Coleman and Gaines, the intoxicated victim wrongly accused someone else but quickly recanted, according to defense attorneys at Winston & Strawn, the law firm that took on the case through its Racial Justice & Equity CEASE Initiative.
The Chicago Police Department issued a press release announcing charges against Gaines, Coleman, and the juveniles two days after they were arrested.
But defense investigators obtained surveillance footage from cameras operated by the Chicago Police Department and the Chicago Housing Authority as well as private surveillance video that “clearly showed” the victim was attacked by drug dealers during a narcotics transaction, not by Coleman and Gaines, according to the firm’s statement.
The defense team also determined that one of the men they represented was making Instacart deliveries on a scooter when police stopped him for questioning. Location data from Instacart proved that he was home at the time of the robbery.
“Despite having an alibi for where he was when the crime occurred, our client was arrested and charged,” the law firm said in a written statement.
Prosecutors dropped charges against Coleman and Gaines after reviewing the evidence presented by their attorneys.
The Chicago Police Department did not respond to an inquiry seeking input for this story.
Original reporting you’ll see nowhere else, paid for by our readers. Click here to support our work.
