When federal agents arrested Ricardo Granadillo Padilla in Raleigh, North Carolina, last winter, homeland security officials framed it as a dramatic break in one of Chicago’s deadliest mass shootings. An ICE press release called him a “suspected shooter,” linked him to Venezuela’s most notorious criminal gang, and suggested that justice for eight people shot in Gage Park last December might finally be in sight.
“ICE Chicago captures shooters in December 2024 mass shooting tied to Tren de Aragua gang,” read the headline on the agency’s press release.
But behind the scenes, the case apparently went nowhere. No one has been charged. Ballistic tests came up empty. And months later, without fanfare, federal authorities quietly put Granadillo on a plane back to Venezuela.
Around 2 p.m. on December 2, 2024, Chicago police rushed to the 3500 block of West 59th Street, responding to frantic calls about gunfire ripping through a birthday party. Four men and four women, all between the ages of 20 and 35, were shot. Three men died: 32-year-old Osmer Angel Ferrer Oria, 26-year-old Hector Victor Miguel Sojo Vargas, and 28-year-old Jhan Carlos Blanquissett.
Witnesses said the party featured a popular Venezuelan DJ and drew dozens of guests.
Two months later, agents from ICE and Homeland Security Investigations descended on a modest three-bedroom house in Raleigh, North Carolina, looking for Granadillo, who they described as a suspected member of the Tren de Aragua gang.
A Homeland Security press release trumpeted the arrest, claiming it was tied to a “mass homicide investigation by the Chicago Police Department.” Fourteen undocumented immigrants were detained during the raid, including Granadillo, after most tried to run out the back door, a recent affidavit filed by a Homeland Security Investigations agent said.
Inside the home, agents found a stolen firearm. But according to the affidavit, the weapon yielded no usable fingerprints and ballistic testing showed it wasn’t linked to any known shootings. With no physical evidence and no charges from Chicago prosecutors, the red-hot Chicago mass shooting angle quickly devolved into a routine immigration matter.
An immigration judge ordered Granadillo removed from the country on August 19. A month later, on September 19, agents escorted him onto a deportation flight from Harlingen, Texas, to Caracas, Venezuela. In a filing seeking forfeiture of the seized gun, the federal agent noted that “his current whereabouts are unknown.”
Of the others arrested in the February raid, two were later released and remain at large, the agent wrote. The rest were deported in March.
In the same ICE announcement that labeled Granadillo a suspected killer, the agency named another man, 24-year-old Edward Martinez Cermeno, as “another suspected shooter.” He, too, has never been charged.
What began as a highly publicized arrest touted by federal officials as a step toward solving a triple murder has ended with silence. Nearly a year later, the Gage Park shooting remains unsolved, and the man once portrayed as its central suspect is walking free — in Venezuela.
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