Sitting on the hallway flooring outdoors a Prepare dinner County courtroom Thursday, Vicente Colores-Chalmers pulled up a September 2018 video of his fiance, Shane Colombo.
Colombo, 25, had simply walked right into a rental the couple had bought in Evanston for the primary time, and despatched Colores-Chalmers a video of himself there, laughing and saying whats up. About two hours after he despatched the video to Colores-Chalmers, Colombo, an incoming doctoral scholar at Northwestern College, was shot to dying close to Clark Road and Howard Avenue in Rogers Park.
On Thursday night time, a jury discovered Diante Velocity, now 26, responsible of first-degree homicide after about 4 hours of deliberation. Contained in the courtroom on the Leighton Prison Courtroom Constructing, Colombo’s mom, Tonya Colombo, gasped as the decision was learn. Velocity’s mom and grandmother, on the opposite aspect of the courtroom, remained quiet.
Shortly after courtroom was dismissed, Tonya Colombo, 58, grinned. It had been an anxious six years of ready and “wanting justice, wanting to offer him peace,” she mentioned. “Now I really feel we are able to lastly do this.”
Ready for the trial was demanding for each dad and mom. Shane Colombo’s father, Ernesto, introduced a tattered file of paperwork to every day of the courtroom proceedings. The file contained all the pieces from his son’s delivery and dying certificates to his social safety card and notes from conversations he’s had with detectives. He has poured a lot of his grief into the intricacies of the authorized course of and Velocity’s legal historical past, regardless that he knew it could not undo the occasions of six years in the past.
“Nothing’s going to carry him again,” Ernesto Colombo mentioned. “(However) we’re on the half the place we search justice.”
Throughout closing arguments Thursday, prosecutors mentioned justice meant nothing lower than a first-degree homicide conviction. Whether or not Velocity had geared toward Shane Colombo or at anybody else, Assistant State’s Legal professional James Papa mentioned, “the regulation doesn’t permit a shooter to be a nasty shot.”
“(Velocity) turned Howard and Clark Road into his personal personal goal vary,” Assistant State’s Legal professional Kim Ward mentioned. “He was a menace and a menace to everybody on the market and the one who paid the worth was Shane Colombo.”
Velocity’s protection attorneys centered on the argument that Velocity had been taking pictures in self-defense, after a person in a white tank prime who Velocity mentioned was threatening him and his buddies.
Surveillance video confirmed Colombo collapsing to the sidewalk however didn’t seize anybody firing a weapon. Assistant Public Defender Sarah Fransene mentioned there wasn’t footage of Velocity’s alleged supposed goal making the threats that they argued put Velocity in worry of his security.
“Simply because the video didn’t decide up each single angle of what occurred at Clark and Howard that night time doesn’t imply (one thing) didn’t occur,” Fransene mentioned.
Protection attorneys additionally sought to solid suspicion on how Chicago police processed the scene of the taking pictures and accused the investigating detective of mendacity to Velocity about how a lot of the taking pictures was captured on video. They acknowledged that the case was tragic and high-profile and prompt to the jury that police felt strain to make progress on the case.
Whereas prosecutors zeroed in on Velocity’s phrases in a name to his mom the place he mentioned “I used to be taking pictures and I hit an harmless; I hit a white dude and he’s useless,” Velocity’s attorneys as an alternative centered on the account he gave his mom in the identical cellphone name; claiming a person in a tank prime threatened him.
Colombo’s dying was “a mindless, terrible, horrible tragedy,” Fransene mentioned. “However you may’t let sympathy or another prejudice affect your judgment on this case.”
As he sat and waited for the decision Thursday afternoon, Colores-Chalmers sorted by means of photos of Colombo on his cellphone. Colombo was all the time shifting, he mentioned. He all the time had a skateboard. He was all the time operating late, actually because he needed to be “in all places .”
Although Colores-Chalmers mentioned he knew immediately that he needed to marry Colombo after they met at a fraternity occasion, the pair received engaged in 2017. Colombo needed to play the James Blake music “Retrograde” at their wedding ceremony. Colores-Chalmers has gotten married, however he nonetheless can’t hearken to the reams of playlists Colombo made for him all through their relationship.
He lived in Evanston, within the rental he’d purchased to share with Colombo, for 3 years. For the primary few months, Colores-Chalmers introduced flowers each day to the positioning the place he was killed. He took public transit down the identical streets that prosecutors and protection attorneys referenced all through the trial. He left Chicago and has studied to turn into a dying doula, centered on supporting dying individuals and their family members.
“The expression while you see somebody (deceased) and should establish them is terrible,” he mentioned. “I don’t need to reside in a world the place individuals get to go away it and their final expertise is a horrible one. Wouldn’t you need to be helped and given dignity and respect and love?”
He hopes to work in hospital settings, but in addition in prisons and jails, the place he’s sure to come across individuals convicted of crimes just like the one which killed Colombo.
Colores-Chalmers mentioned earlier than the jury returned that he needed to see the case resolved, however expressed sympathy for socioeconomic pressures that may land individuals within the legal justice system.
“I really feel dangerous that he wasn’t supported and he didn’t have an outlet to rework his life,” mentioned Colores-Chalmers, 34, who wore Colombo’s engagement ring on a series round his neck. “I hope that he lives a greater life after this. Possibly he will probably be taken care of.”
Velocity is about to be sentenced on Dec 3.
