The gunman who shot and nearly killed a downtown store clerk last month was identified through facial recognition technology linked to the Illinois Secretary of State’s database, prosecutors said Thursday. It’s the latest case solved using the technology, even as state lawmakers move to ban Illinois law enforcement agencies from using it.
The 31-year-old victim had worked at 7-Eleven, 191 West Adams Street, for about six years when 30-year-old Jaquell Hayes entered the store on March 12 and began stealing over-the-counter medications, prosecutors said. The cashier intervened and Hayes allegedly threatened him before leaving.
Hayes returned the next day and threatened the clerk while reaching for his waistband, prompting the victim to tell him to leave, prosecutors said. When Hayes refused, the clerk used bear spray in an attempt to defend himself, something he had never done before. Hayes left the store.
The clerk came from behind the register to lock the revolving glass doors so Hayes couldn’t get back in. As he approached the entrance, he saw Hayes standing directly outside the door, pulling out a gun and firing several shots through the glass door, prosecutors said.
Both the victim and multiple 911 callers reported hearing between three and seven gunshots. The clerk was struck in the stomach, arm and five times in the upper back. Believing he was dying, the victim called 911, notified his employer and called his girlfriend to say goodbye, prosecutors said in an arrest filing. He survived, but suffered life-changing injuries.
Investigators found footage from a CPD surveillance camera that showed an unknown man running east on Adams Street toward LaSalle Street after the shooting. Detectives began looking at Hayes after he was identified as a possible match during a search of the secretary of state’s database, prosecutors said.
Investigators found three .45 caliber shell casings at the scene of the shooting, but never recovered the firearm used in the shooting. Prosecutors said Hayes has a valid firearm owner identification card and has two guns registered to him, including a .45 caliber Glock.
Less than a week after the shooting, the victim identified Hayes in a photo lineup as the person who shot him. According to prosecutors, a witness also identified Hayes in a separate photo lineup on March 24, 2026.
Judge Antara Rivera granted the state’s detention request for Hayes, who is charged with attempted first-degree murder.
The case is the latest to center on facial recognition technology that a North Side lawmaker is trying to ban. Rep. Kelly Cassidy’s bill would ban any local or state law enforcement agency in Illinois from accessing a facial recognition database and would prevent agencies from circumventing that ban by outsourcing the work to a third party.
The bill failed to make it out of the Illinois House Judiciary – Civil Committee before the body adjourned last month and was sent back to the Rules Committee. But it has gained three new co-sponsors, all from Chicago — Rep. Kevin Olickal of the Far North Side, Rep. Lilian Jiménez of Humboldt Park and Rep. Diane Blair-Sherlock of Villa Park — suggesting the effort is not yet complete.
CWB Chicago previously reported on dozens of violent crimes, many of which originated at the CTA, with Chicago detectives developing critical leads by entering surveillance images into facial recognition databases, often the dataset maintained by the Illinois Secretary of State.
Those cases include murders, rapes, robberies and kidnappings. Just days after that report, investigators used facial recognition to help identify Jose Miranda, the man accused of killing Loyola University freshman Sheridan Gorman near Loyola Beach — a crime that took place in Cassidy’s own district.
Just this week, Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke pointed to facial recognition as one of the important tools used to combat crime on the CTA.
Cassidy dismissed CWB Chicago’s detailed, case-specific reporting of murders, rapes and robberies solved using facial recognition as “anecdotes,” calling it “curious that when discussing this issue we hear about particularly heinous and disturbing crimes, but nothing about people being wrongly identified by facial recognition technology and held for hours — if not days — based on system errors.”
Supporters and critics of the bill agree on at least one thing: They have been unable to find an example of someone being criminally charged in Illinois based on a possible facial recognition match, without supporting evidence.
Detectives use a match as a starting point to gather clues, not as a basis for charges, said Tom Weitzel, the retired police chief in the suburb of Riverside. He called the technology “one of the most important investigative tools of the last fifty years” and said Cassidy’s bill “doesn’t regulate facial recognition, it destroys it.”
The ACLU of Illinois supports the ban, recognizing that it would completely end law enforcement’s use of the tool. Some observers are instead pushing for a middle ground: codifying best practices, banning arrests based solely on facial recognition, requiring officer training and certification, and mandating that biometric data on anyone identified as a suspect be deleted within 72 hours.
An ACLU representative also acknowledged that the organization has found no examples of someone being criminally charged in Illinois based solely on a facial recognition match without supporting evidence, although he added that a lack of public reporting on how the tools are used makes it difficult to know the full picture.
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