Man gets 45 years for killing ex-girlfriend as their kids watched

A South Side man who gunned down his ex-girlfriend in front of their two young children as they sat in a van was sentenced to 45 years in prison Friday after he pleaded guilty to the murder.

After Myron Mason’s arrest last year, Cook County prosecutors said, without providing more specifics, that Mason lashed out at Mechelle Lewis because he was mad over the transmission of a sexually transmitted disease.

“I know what I did. I’m the one that called. I killed her. I killed my wife,” prosecutors said Mason, now 34, told police after he drove himself to the Grand Crossing District police station and was arrested for Lewis’ murder on April 21, 2015.

While the pair’s children — ages 8 and 5 — looked on, Mason shot Lewis eight times as she sat in the driver’s seat of her parked van outside her house in the 7200 block of South Bennett Avenue. Both children would later tell police it was their father who killed their mother.

Lewis’ current boyfriend saw the shooting from nearby at 72nd Street and Bennett Avenue and called 911, prosecutors said last year.

Mason and Lewis, who had a 10-year relationship, had been arguing over the phone before the deadly shooting, prosecutors said.

When Lewis pulled up to her street, she saw Mason was waiting there in his white Buick, prosecutors said.

Seeing her ex, the 28-year-old woman drove around the block with her kids inside before coming back.

Mason had driven away but quickly pulled up, got out of his car and began firing, prosecutors said.

He grabbed his kids and sped off in his Buick.

Lewis’ boyfriend gave police a description of Mason’s car, and he was stopped 10 minutes later.

“I don’t have a gun on me,” Mason told officers, according to a police report. “I dropped it by my car.”

Mason later confessed to shooting Lewis and had called his sister and Lewis’ stepfather to admit what he did, authorities said.