Man allegedly shot, killed girlfriend ‘execution style’ in her Chatham apartment

A Calumet City man who allegedly shot his girlfriend and the mother of his young son “execution style” last week on the South Side was ordered held without bail Monday.

Karim Hunter, 27, who is charged with first-degree murder, appeared for a bond hearing in the George N. Leighton Criminal Courthouse.

Chicago police

Jeaneen Walters, 30, was found in the early morning hours of June 26 in her apartment in the 700 block of East 79th Street lying face down with a bullet wound in the back of her head, prosecutors said Monday. Hunter originally told investigators he had nothing to do with his girlfriend’s death, but then changed his story multiple times, prosecutors said, including saying she’d committed suicide. Hunter eventually said the couple had been in an argument and that the gun had gone off “accidentally,” prosecutors said.

Hunter also allegedly told investigators that he’d wrapped up the gun and had thrown it in the Calumet River, prosecutors said.

A witness, Walters’ cousin, told investigators Walters had said on June 19 that she was unhappy in her relationship and was planning to end it.

Video surveillance of Walters’ apartment shows Hunter arriving about 7 p.m. the night before the killing, prosecutors said. Hunter’s phone records show that he called his brother about 3:30 a.m. June 26 and asked for a ride, prosecutors said. Video surveillance from a nearby business shows Hunter leaving his girlfriend’s apartment and then returning a little while later to pick up a phone, prosecutors allege.

“It doesn’t appear like a suicide or an accident to me, based on what I’ve just heard,” Cook County Judge John Lyke said.

Hunter’s criminal background includes convictions for burglary, residential burglary and armed robbery of a senior citizen, for which he received five years in prison, prosecutors said.

In arguing for bail, defense attorneys said there were no witnesses to the alleged crime and that Hunter is a lifelong Chicago-area resident.