CHICAGO — Prosecutors have charged a man with committing a murder on Independence Day 2023 after Chicago cops painstakingly compiled video cellular phone location data that tracked him from Diversey Harbor to the crime scene, officials said.
Luis Vela, 28, was detained by Judge David Kelly to await trial on one charge of first-degree murder.
Around 7:20 a.m., two men shot and killed 24-year-old Leonardo Martinez and critically injured his 25-year-old brother in the 4400 block of South Wood.
Investigators found the shooters’ getaway car and learned that it had been at Diversey Harbor shortly before the murder, according to CPD records.
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Detectives allegedly found additional video from Diversey Harbor that showed a man wearing clothes identical to one of the shooters getting into the gunmen’s car. That man, prosecutors claim, was Vela. And, they said, cops found his DNA inside the vehicle.
Vela’s phone location data tracked the exact route taken by the getaway car from Diversey Harbor to the shooting scene, prosecutors said in a detention petition. It also pinged at the crime scene at the time of the shooting, they said.
Cook County court records show Vela was sentenced to five years in prison in 2017 after he pleaded guilty to aggravated discharge of a firearm and, in a separate case, possessing a stolen motor vehicle.