CHICAGO — Federal prosecutors have charged a man apparently living under overpasses in the city and suburbs for threatening to kill a man through a collection of Facebook accounts.
Hector Leonardo Gutierrez, 31, is charged with communicating a threat to injure another person through interstate commerce, according to court records. The charges appear to be based on the fact that although both Gutierrez and the alleged victim live locally, an FBI agent was able to view the threats on a computer in California.
In federal court filings, an FBI agent says Guitierrez lived with the victim when he was in high school, and even helped care for the victim’s mother at the time. According to the officer, Gutierrez moved in above the victim’s barbershop in 2020 but was kicked out for stealing change and causing trouble. The victim believed Gutierrez was responsible for a series of graffiti incidents, broken windows and burglaries that followed.
With four Facebook accounts under the names Pablo Picazo, Samuel Adams and two versions of his real name, Guitierrez recently began posting threats targeting the victim, an FBI agent said in a criminal complaint. All accounts appear to feature the same man wearing the same cape, wire crown and crucifix fashioned from copper pipe. The officer said the different accounts often tagged each other or said they were “with” each other in messages.
In one alleged threat this month, Guiterrez posted a screenshot of a text message to the victim in which he threatened to “chop you into a hundred pieces while you’re still alive.”
The complaint stated that Guitierrez posted another message in August saying he could kill the victim “with my bare hands, but he keeps that gay 380. Ruger [firearm] on him.”
“Bro, I spared him for his mother’s sake. Otherwise, he would have been dead by April 2020,” said a report reportedly published in June. “If I did [the victim] If performed, it will become a holiday like Christmas, January 1st and July 4th combined. Everyone gets presents and presents.”
‘After we chop [the victim] we are going to feed the carnivores at the Brookfield Zoo into a hundred pieces,” another post from June reportedly said. “Finally he’ll be useful for something.”
Another threatening post allegedly threatened harm to the victim’s minor child.
In addition to the Facebook profile photos, an FBI agent linked Gutierrez to the accounts because their content sometimes matched verifiable events in Gutierrez’s life, such as earlier this month when he was charged with 41 counts of criminal damage to property in Oak Lawn.
“I was arrested again,” Gutierrez posted, “41 counts as a misdemeanor.”
Police recently arrested Gutierrez after noticing red, gold and purple substances similar to those seen in the Facebook profile photos under a bridge at 115th and Cicero. The FBI agent said they believe Guitierrez lived there because he posted last month that “y’all niggas know I live under the bridge at 67th and Cicero, 115th and Cicero, and 123rd and Pulaski.”
Chicago police records show Guitierrez was arrested in August for assault at the Jackson Blue Line station and in February for allegedly possessing a fake firearm at Pritzker Park in the Loop.
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