A Chicago man was sentenced Monday to 31 years in prison for his role in the fatal daytime shooting of a promising high school student on a South Loop street corner three years ago. Another man was injured in the same shooting, prosecutors said.
Jordan Parks, 22, pleaded guilty to one count of murder in exchange for the sentence handed down by Judge Stanley Sacks, according to court records. Parks must serve 100% of his sentence under state law.
The case centers on the murder of 18-year-old Cameron Rayford, who was weeks away from graduating from Perspectives Charter School and had already interned at accounting and real estate firms while pursuing a dream of working in investment banking.
Prosecutors alleged that Parks, then 16-year-old Antoine Blakes and an unnamed 15-year-old boy were responsible for the murders of Rayford and another 18-year-old man in the 1900 block of South State Street on April 27, 2023. Blakes’ case is still pending and he is due back in court on August 6.
Prosecutors say Blakes was driving a stolen Kia, with Parks and the 15-year-old on the passenger side, when the group encountered a Jeep driven by Rayford around 3:30 p.m. Three people jumped out of the Jeep and ran, but Rayford had been fatally shot and remained in the driver’s seat as the vehicle rolled through an intersection before stopping.
Prosecutors said Blakes, Parks and the teen left the stolen Kia near Cermak Road and State Street, then took a Green Line train to 35th Street and walked to the apartment complex where they lived. Chicago police said they recognized Blakes and the teen from surveillance footage from CTA cameras.
Investigators said they identified Parks as a suspect the day after the shooting, when he himself became a gunshot victim. Officers noticed he was wearing the same shirt as one of the suspects in the South Loop shooting. It wasn’t long before police conducted searches at the homes of all three suspects.
At the Blakes’ home, officers said they found a 9-millimeter handgun equipped with an automatic fire switch. Ballistics testing showed the weapon ejected some of the shell casings found at the scene, prosecutors said. A second gun was recovered from Parks’ home, prosecutors said, and tests showed it had ejected shell casings found in both the stolen Kia and at the shooting scene.
Rayford’s murder is the second death Parks has been held responsible for in his relatively short life. In the summer of 2020, Parks was driving a stolen SUV when he jumped a curb and struck a 43-year-old woman in the 2900 block of South Wells Street. According to prosecutors, Parks fled but was arrested, still holding the screwdriver he had used to operate the stolen vehicle.
The woman was paralyzed and lived in an inpatient care facility until she died from her injuries in February 2022. Parks pleaded guilty to reckless homicide in that case and was sentenced to three years’ probation.
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