A 17-year-old Chicago Public Schools student was shot dead on his way to school last autumn, and a key break in CPD’s investigation came from an alert generated by a suburban police department’s ShotSpotter system — the same gunshot-detection technology that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson had shut down a year earlier.
The case also highlights another reality of Chicago’s post-ShotSpotter era: The man accused of killing Travon Freeman as he rode to school, Anthony Nunnally, is also charged with killing two former girlfriends in separate slayings. Both victims lay undiscovered for hours after they were shot. Nobody called 911 to report the gunfire, and Chicago’s ShotSpotter system was no longer relaying alerts to police following Johnson’s decision to end the city’s contract.
Travon Freeman
Just before 8:30 a.m. on September 29, 2025, Travon was riding his bicycle in the 8600 block of South Baker Avenue, wearing a backpack and a lanyard containing his school ID as he headed to class.
Surveillance video showed four people pulling into an alley behind the block in a black Hyundai Sonata that had been stolen about two hours earlier in Chicago Heights, prosecutors said. Nunnally, 21, and two others got out of the car carrying firearms and ran toward the street where Travon was riding, according to prosecutors. One of the guns had a red baseplate.
All three took shooting stances, although the video did not clearly show them firing. They then ran back to the stolen Hyundai, which drove away. Witnesses heard gunfire and saw three males standing over Travon’s fallen body before running to the sedan.
Police recovered 25 shell casings at the scene: 12 .40-caliber casings and 13 9-millimeter casings, prosecutors said.
Shortly after 11 o’clock that night, Chicago Heights police responded to a ShotSpotter alert in the first block of West Hickory Street. Nobody was struck by the gunfire that triggered the alert, but officers found shell casings and two firearms, including a .40-caliber Glock with an extended magazine, a red baseplate, and a red trigger, prosecutors said. Ballistics testing matched it to 12 of the shell casings recovered at Travon’s murder scene.
Later, investigators working on an unrelated carjacking case examined Nunnally’s Instagram account and came upon a photo of him holding a black handgun with a red trigger and a serial number matching the Glock recovered in Chicago Heights after Travon’s murder, prosecutors said.
Police also recovered multiple videos sent to the account that appeared to have been recorded inside the stolen Hyundai shortly after the shooting. One allegedly showed Nunnally sitting in the driver’s seat holding a handgun. The camera then turned toward another person who appeared to be holding the Glock with the distinctive red trigger and baseplate.
Nunnally, who is already detained in connection with the murders of his ex-girlfriends and the carjacking, was ordered detained again in Travon’s case by Judge Joanne Rosado.
Two girlfriends slain
Five days after Johnson ended the city’s relationship with ShotSpotter, at about 9:30 a.m. on September 28, 2024, Chicago police responded to the 9500 block of South Avenue N after a resident called 911 to report that a woman had been lying unresponsive in the same spot for an extended period.
The woman, later identified as 19-year-old Sierra Evans, had been shot. Police found 18 shell casings next to her body.
Prosecutors say Evans’ then-boyfriend, Nunnally, was responsible for her death. They had been dating for several weeks and were hanging out with two other people at a nearby home the night of the shooting. At some point, prosecutors said, Nunnally choked and battered Evans, prompting the others to kick him out. Nunnally later called the people who had thrown him out and said he was taking an Uber home.
Shortly afterward, they heard gunshots outside. Nunnally then allegedly burst into the basement carrying a gun and said he had just committed a murder.
Evans’ body remained in a nearby alley until the 911 caller noticed that she had not moved and asked first responders to check on her.
Although Johnson had ended the city’s ShotSpotter contract, the system’s sensors were still detecting gunfire. That information was no longer being relayed to police, according to Ald. Peter Chico (10th). Chico said SoundThinking, ShotSpotter’s parent company, later confirmed that its sensors detected multiple gunshots at 12:06 a.m. — roughly nine and a half hours before Evans was found.
Nunnally later began dating another woman and allegedly played her a television news report about Evans’ killing as a threat, saying he would do the same thing to her.
About 13 months after Evans’ death, prosecutors say, Nunnally killed another girlfriend, 17-year-old Gabriella Arellano. A passerby found Gabriella shot in the head in an alley behind the 11000 block of South Mackinaw Avenue around 10:20 a.m. on October 26, 2025. Again, nobody had called police to report gunfire in the area.
Detectives later found surveillance video that allegedly showed Nunnally, Gabriella, and a third person walking in the area before the killing. Other footage captured a gunshot, followed by Nunnally running from the area with the unidentified person, prosecutors said.
Chicago police arrested Nunnally two days later in connection with Gabriella’s murder, according to a CPD report reviewed by CWB Chicago. But prosecutors did not immediately charge him with killing her. Instead, Nunnally was charged in connection with carjacking a man he had known since sixth grade, according to court records. That’s the carjacking investigation that led police to review his Instagram account.
Investigators subsequently recruited Nunnally’s cellmate, a former member of Nunnally’s street gang, the Latin Kings, to wear a recording device and try to get him to talk about Gabriella’s killing, prosecutors said.
During the recorded conversation, Nunnally allegedly said he believed she was planning to set him up for a rival gang. When the cellmate asked whether he was sorry for killing her, Nunnally allegedly replied: “You gotta do what you gotta do.”
Nunnally has picked up yet another criminal case while in jail, although it’s the least of his legal troubles. On May 18, jail staff monitoring surveillance video allegedly saw him repeatedly reaching into his pants and tucking something away. Correctional officers pulled him aside and found two small square pieces of drug-soaked paper wrapped in a larger piece of paper inside his long underwear, according to the sheriff’s office.
The pieces tested positive for a synthetic cannabinoid and buprenorphine. A grand jury indicted him on a charge of bringing a controlled substance into a penal institution.
Chicago police continue to consider Nunnally a suspect in additional murder cases, according to multiple sources.
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