One victim had gone to a gas station to buy a soda. Another was sitting in a car with a friend. A third was taking his three children to buy a puppy.
Prosecutors said this week that a Chicago man, Antonio Reyes, fatally shot six people in the city over a nine-month period in 2020, beginning when he was 16 years old.
In all but one of the cases, Mr. Reyes seemed to have no connection to his victims, and was targeting “complete strangers,” the Cook County state’s attorney, Eileen O’Neill Burke, said in an interview on Thursday.
“It appears he was just doing it for the thrill of it — to murder people, repeatedly,” she said.
Mr. Reyes, now 21, has been in a Cook County jail since he was arrested in December 2020 and charged with one of the murders. Prosecutors said on Wednesday that he had been charged with five additional murders and four attempted murders, all occurring in 2020.
The police said Mr. Reyes had been linked to the killings through shell casings from a .40-caliber handgun, social media posts and other evidence. Mr. Reyes has also been charged with using a shank to try to kill his cellmate in jail, Ms. Burke said.
Mr. Reyes’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Mr. Reyes was arraigned on five charges of murder and four charges of attempted murder on Tuesday and pleaded not guilty, the state’s attorney’s office said.
He was being held without bail on a previous charge of murder in the killing of Luis Davalos Garcia, 26, on June 24, 2020, the office said. He is awaiting trial in that case.
Mr. Reyes knew only one of his victims, Damian Duran, who was fatally shot during a drug deal on May 1, 2020, prosecutors said. Mr. Reyes was affiliated with the Latin Kings gang, but none of the killings appeared to be connected to his gang status, prosecutors said.
“It’s sad to think about a 17-year-old committing serial murders over the course of nine months — how many people were taken,” Ms. Burke said at a news conference with the Chicago police on Wednesday.
In one seemingly random attack, on Nov. 8, 2020, prosecutors said, Mr. Reyes fatally shot Jose Martinez, 31, while Mr. Martinez was in a car, taking his three children, ages 3, 7 and 9, to buy a puppy.
Mr. Reyes had driven up to Mr. Martinez and “flashed a gang sign” and then drove around the block twice before he fatally shot him, according to court records.
Larry Snelling, the superintendent of the Chicago police, said Mr. Reyes had been charged with attempted murder for having shot at the children.
“This speaks to the level of disregard this offender had toward human life,” Superintendent Snelling said at the news conference on Wednesday. “It’s difficult to comprehend how anyone could easily take someone’s life, especially so many in one year.”
He said the police would continue to investigate whether Mr. Reyes might have been involved in additional acts of violence.
“We have six lives and who knows how many he may have been responsible for?” Superintendent Snelling said.
