Man charged with murder in 2017 fatal shooting near Old Town apartment complex

A man was denied bail Sunday as he faces a first-degree murder charge in a 2017 fatal shooting in Old Town.

Edward D. Waits, 25, is charged with killing 20-year-old H. Feazell after a fight outside a Near North Side apartment complex, according to Cook County prosecutors.

The night of August 12, 2017, hundreds of people gathered outside the Marshall Field Garden Apartments for a memorial celebration, Assistant State’s Attorney Kathleen Conniff said Sunday at Waits’s initial court hearing.

Chicago Police and the apartment complex’s security guards provided crowd control and filtered guests in and out of the complex, Conniff said.

Right before midnight, Waits walked over to the west side of the complex, where a fight had broken out between three or four people, including Feazell, on North Hudson Avenue near West Evergreen Avenue, Conniff said. No one had drawn a weapon during the fight, which was finished by the time Waits got there.

When Waits walked up to the group, he took out a .40-caliber gun and fired a shot at Feazell, who was standing in the grass after the tension had calmed, Conniff said. The shot missed, so Waits tried to shoot again, but the gun jammed. Waits unjammed the gun and fired a third time, this time striking Feazell in the chest.

Paramedics took Feazell to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, authorities said. He lived in Austin.

After the shooting, Waits ran back toward the apartment complex, where security guards denied him entry, Conniff said. After failing to hide the gun under a car down the street, Waits got into his own Cadillac, still holding the gun, and drove away. As he drove off, an officer took note of the Cadillac’s license plate number, which is registered under Waits’s name.

A witness told officers that Waits was the shooter, and video surveillance showed Waits wearing the same clothes immediately before and after the shooting, Conniff said. Cell phone records also showed he was in the area when the shooting happened, and police surveillance cameras showed Waits still wearing the same clothes two hours later near his home on the South Side.

Almost exactly nine months after the shooting, officers arrested Waits on Friday afternoon outside his home, police records show.

Waits had been convicted of illegal gun possession in 2012 and drug possession in 2014, and had been discharged from parole in those cases just 10 days before the shooting, according to Conniff.

Waits will remain in Cook County Jail until his next court appearance on Monday.