CHICAGO – In May 2021, when U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall sentenced Gad Hughes to five years in prison for throwing a stolen machine gun from a car while speeding from police at 100 mph on the Dan Ryan Expressway, narrated she told him she was concerned about “an escalation of behavior” in his criminal history, including drug trafficking and weapons cases.
Minutes before the sentencing, Hughes, 29, told Kendall he was “ready to change now and be a better man for my children and family.”
“I’m at a point in age where if I don’t wake up now, I never will, and I refuse to let that happen for the sake of my life, my future, and my children and their future,” said Hughes. .
Hughes is currently on parole for that machine gun case and is back in custody, accused of shooting and killing a 62-year-old man on Thanksgiving afternoon.
Prosecutors said surveillance video clearly showed Hughes’ face as he shot from a minivan at a home in the 4000 block of West Monroe around 3:21 p.m.
Prosecutors say bullets flew into the house, including one that went through a second-floor window and struck Ignacio Mendiola in the head. Mendiola died two days later.
Chicago police found Hughes’ minivan on the Dan Ryan Expressway near 75th Street and arrested him. Prosecutors say he had 88 bags of heroin worth $16,500 in a book bag on his passenger seat.
Investigators searched Hughes’ phone and discovered that he had searched the Internet for stories about the shooting. Hughes also sent text messages “indicating he was in trouble,” said Judge Antara Rivera, who detained him as a security risk.
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