A Chicago man has been sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to two Northwest Side murders he committed within days of each other in December 2021, cases that were solved after police found the murder weapon in a carjacked vehicle he was driving.
Hader Garcia, 22, pleaded guilty to both killings in exchange for the sentence imposed by Judge Peggy Chiampas, according to court records. Under Illinois law, he must serve 100% of his sentence.
The case against Garcia began to unravel on January 7, 2022, when police arrested him while he was driving a recently carjacked SUV. Since the victim could not identify him as one of the people who took the vehicle, prosecutors charged Garcia with possessing a stolen motor vehicle.
But what officers found inside the SUV ultimately connected Garcia to two murders committed just a week apart: a 9mm handgun with a “Supreme” sticker on the magazine.
The first murder occurred around 3 a.m. on December 18, 2021, in the 4700 block of West Irving Park Road. According to prosecutors, 36-year-old Richard Robinette, a handyman who also worked as a beer vendor at Soldier Field, was stopped at a red light when Garcia pulled alongside him in a stolen Acura SUV.
Garcia fired six shots into Robinette’s vehicle, striking him multiple times. Robinette’s car rolled forward and crashed into parked vehicles. He died a short time later. Witnesses who were stopped behind Robinette remained at the scene and spoke with police as the Acura fled.
Using surveillance footage and license plate reader technology, investigators tracked the stolen Acura to Skokie. There, video recorded about five hours after the shooting showed Garcia getting out of the driver’s seat and placing a handgun in the front of his pants.
A Skokie police officer recognized Garcia from prior encounters, prosecutors said, and investigators also recovered a shell casing from the Acura’s driver-side floorboard that matched six shell casings found at the murder scene.
The case took a major turn when Garcia was arrested weeks later while driving a stolen SUV. Police recovered three firearms from the vehicle, including one equipped with an olive-green extended magazine bearing a “Supreme” sticker. Ballistics testing later determined that the gun was used to kill Robinette, prosecutors alleged.
Investigators also found photos and videos on Garcia’s cellphone showing him holding a handgun with the same distinctive magazine. Prosecutors said the images showed Garcia wearing the same clothing seen in surveillance footage taken hours after Robinette’s murder. GPS data from the phone allegedly placed Garcia near the shooting scene when Robinette was killed, too.
A few months after Garcia was charged with Robinette’s murder, a grand jury indicted him in the December 11, 2021, killing of Victor Gutierrez in the 3700 block of West Belle Plaine Avenue. Prosecutors said Garcia fired multiple shots from an SUV, striking Gutierrez in the head.
Once again, ballistics evidence pointed to the “Supreme” firearm recovered during Garcia’s January 2022 arrest. Additional evidence, including surveillance video and social media posts, helped detectives link Garcia to both the gun and the shooting, prosecutors said.
While awaiting trial in the murder cases, Garcia was also charged by federal prosecutors alongside 10 other alleged members of the La Familia Stones street gang in a major crack cocaine distribution case. Garcia pleaded guilty in that case in 2024 and received a 37-month federal prison sentence, according to court records.
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