Cameron Rayford had less than a month to go before he walked across the stage at Perspectives Charter School. The 18-year-old had already completed internships at an accounting firm and a real estate company, building toward a career in investment banking. On the afternoon of April 27, 2023, those dreams were taken from him.
Rayford was behind the wheel of a Jeep on South State Street in the South Loop just after 3:30 p.m. when a stolen Kia pulled alongside him. According to prosecutors, someone fired shots from the Kia’s passenger windows, and within moments Rayford was dead, his vehicle rolling driverless through an intersection before finally coming to a stop. Three passengers scattered from the Jeep. Another 18-year-old man was hit but survived.
On Friday, more than three years later, one of the men prosecutors say was responsible for the shooting was sentenced to 24 years in prison. Antoine Blakes, 19, pleaded guilty to one count of murder, according to court records. Judge Stanley Sacks handed down the sentence, and Blakes must serve 100% of it under state law.
Blakes was not alone that day, according to prosecutors. They allege he was driving the stolen Kia while 22-year-old Jordan Parks and an unnamed 15-year-old boy sat on the passenger side. Blakes struck the Jeep first, prosecutors said, then pulled alongside it so Parks and the teenager could open fire. Parks was sentenced last month to 31 years for his role in the killing.
The three abandoned the stolen Kia near Cermak Road and State Street, then boarded a Green Line train to 35th Street and walked to the apartment complex where they lived, prosecutors said. Their trip home did not go unnoticed for long. Chicago police said they recognized Blakes and the teenager in surveillance footage from CTA cameras.
Parks became a suspect the following day, when he became a gunshot victim himself. Officers noticed he was wearing the same shirt as one of the suspects captured on surveillance video from the South Loop shooting and quickly made the connection. Search warrants soon followed at the homes of all three suspects.
At Blakes’ home, officers recovered a 9-millimeter handgun outfitted with an auto-fire switch, a device that allows a semiautomatic weapon to fire continuously. Ballistics testing showed the gun had ejected some of the shell casings recovered at the shooting scene, according to prosecutors. A second weapon recovered from Parks’ home matched casings found both at the scene and inside the abandoned Kia.
For Parks, the sentence adds a second death to a record that already includes one.
In the summer of 2020, prosecutors said, Parks was behind the wheel of a stolen SUV when he jumped a curb in the 2900 block of South Wells Street and struck a 43-year-old woman. He fled but was arrested nearby, still clutching the screwdriver he had used to operate the stolen vehicle, according to prosecutors.
The woman was left paralyzed and spent the rest of her life in an inpatient care facility. She died from her injuries in February 2022. Parks pleaded guilty to reckless homicide and was sentenced to three years of probation.
