Xavier Tate had allegedly been wandering around the Gage Park neighborhood for hours when Chicago Police Officer Luis Huesca drove past on his way home from work and pulled into a driveway late last month.
Tate walked up to the SUV and fired 10 shots at Huesca, hitting him in the head, chest, arms and thighs, Cook County prosecutors said in court Friday. A neighbor looked out and saw Huesca, still wearing his uniform, lying on the ground as Tate allegedly got into the SUV and drove off.
Huesca never fired back, police officials disclosed Friday.
Tate eluded authorities for 10 days, until he was arrested in a Glendale Heights apartment complex on Wednesday and charged with first-degree murder and aggravated vehicular hijacking.
During that time, investigators said they were able to collect overwhelming evidence against him: his DNA at the crime scene, including on shell casings, and video from nearly a hundred cameras tracking his movements before and immediately after the shooting.
As Tate appeared in a courtroom packed with police officers Friday, Judge Mary Marubio cited the “extensive investigation” as she ordered him detained.
Tate sat calmly in a blue sweatsuit issued by the Cook County Jail and listened intently, occasionally nodding when the judge spoke directly to him but otherwise showing little reaction as prosecutors read through four pages detailing their evidence.
A relative of Huesca’s could be heard crying softly several times, but family members were largely stoic during the proceedings. Afterward, Huesca’s mother Edith thanked everyone for “supporting us in this horrible pain.”
Making her first public comments since the shooting, Huesca said her son “was a good police officer, a good son ... He just made his work the best that he can.”
Luis Huesca’s brother Emiliano said he felt some relief at Tate’s arrest. “I just want everyone to know that there will be justice done for my brother and I want that justice to be done, put our family at least at peace.
“I hope my brother gets that justice that he deserves,” he added.
Neither police nor prosecutors gave a reason why Tate decided to follow Huesca after wandering the streets in the area for at least two hours on April 21.
While police have collected video tracking his movements starting more than a day before the shooting, officials said little Friday about how he remained at large for so long afterward, especially with a $100,000 reward for information in the case.
Investigators traveled to Wisconsin and Iowa, where Tate has relatives, and went to the Rockford area, according to Chief of Detectives Chief of Detectives Antoinette Ursitti.
Then Wednesday afternoon, a fugitive task force converged on a Glendale Heights apartment complex and arrested Tate without incident.
Police officials would not say what led officers there, and prosecutors revealed no new information in court about Tate’s capture. Malik Murphy, who lives in the apartment where Tate was found, has been charged in DuPage County with aiding and abetting a fugitive.
Eighty-four-year-old Joyce Compton said she was sitting on her patio when dozens of police cars raced across the lawn of the complex carrying officers in helmets and shields.
Compton said she heard one of Tate’s relatives lived in the complex. “He came back from somewhere, he was out of town and came back here — which was a mistake,” she said.
In ordering Tate to remain in jail, Judge Marubio cited the lengthy list of digital, video and physical evidence collected against him.
Video shows Tate purchasing a water bottle of the same brand that was later found at Huesca’s SUV, which was abandoned blocks from the shooting.
“Tate’s DNA was present on this evidence,” Ursitti said during a press conference hours before the hearing.
Tate had used his mother’s bank card to pay for it, according to police and prosecutors, helping them build a case against Tate as they searched for him.
Tate’s DNA was found on at least some of the 10 shell casings collected at the shooting scene, prosecutors said. And video shows him fleeing in Huesca’s SUV and abandoning it in an alley, then changing his clothes, they said.
Video also captured Tate stealing a bicycle and riding it to a cousin’s house, prosecutors said. A few hours later, Tate called an Uber for a ride to a relative’s home in the 10800 block of South Hale Avenue, where police would later recover Huesca’s pistol, they said.
An assistant public defender argued the state’s case was weaker than it appeared and questioned the quality of the video surveillance footage and the DNA evidence. The attorney said Tate’s criminal background, which included several pending cases but few convictions, were illustrative of Tate’s youth, not a capacity for violence.
Most important, she said, the person who heard the shooting and saw someone standing over Huesca identified someone else in a photo array.
But the judge said she believed Tate would present a danger if released.
“This was a random person who was targeted, an opportunistic crime,” the judge said. “There is no pretrial program that can mitigate the danger you would pose the community.”
The judge took pains to highlight areas of the proceedings that had been changed by the state’s Pretrial Fairness Act last fall that eliminated cash bail and set new standards for holding a defendant in custody
Marubio patiently explained what was happening and why she made her ruling so Tate could understand.
Huesca had been on the police force for six years and was just two days away from his 31st birthday. He had attended the police academy alongside Officer Andrés Vásquez Lasso, fatally shot in the line of duty just over a year ago.
Months later, Chicago Police Officer Aréanah Preston was shot to death as she was returning home to Avalon Park after her shift.
Mayor Brandon Johnson was notably absent from Huesca’s funeral on Monday after being asked by the officer’s family to stay away.
Addressing reporters about it for the first time Friday, Johnson said he decided to skip it after speaking with the officer’s mother the morning of the funeral.
Johnson did not address the initial push back from the mayor’s office that Johnson’s attendance was mandatory, as the Sun-Times reported Tuesday.
“It was important for me to hear directly from the family,” Johnson said. “And once I had a direct conversation with Officer Huesca’s mother, that’s when we made the commitment to honor her wish.”
Contributing: Sophie Sherry
