A man in Chicago was denied bail following a shooting that left three people dead outside a bar Sunday during a birthday party.
Thirty-two-year-old Samuel Parsons-Salas faces three felony counts of first degree murder, one felony count of attempted first degree murder, and one felony count of kidnapping after the incident that happened outside Vera Lounge on W. School Street, Fox 32 reported.
The party was for a 25-year-old woman and the defendant was there with his girlfriend. When a fight broke out inside the building, the woman being celebrated was reportedly hit and a crowd spilled out onto the street.
The Fox article continued:
A 50-year-old man, identified by police as Rickey Vera, father of the woman who was hit, approached Parsons-Salas in the middle of School Street wanting to know who hit his daughter, prosecutors say.
Parsons-Salas’ girlfriend stood in between the two men. The defendant then fired his gun past his girlfriend three times striking Vera in the head and chest. He was pronounced dead at an area hospital.
Meanwhile, surveillance footage captured the moment the group came outside the building and also recorded the sound of gunshots.
“Parsons-Salas has been convicted of robbery, aggravated battery, and was on parole for a 2010 home invasion. He was released only three months ago,” according to the Fox 32 video report.
The suspect allegedly fired six more times toward a 27-year-old man later identified as Mario Pozuelos, who was struck in his head and throat.
As Vera lay shot in the street, his daughter knelt near him and the defendant shot her in the head, then approached Pozuelos and shot him again in his head. After being taken to a hospital, the man was pronounced dead.
While running to the car where his girlfriend was, the suspect noticed a young woman named Mercedes Tavares hiding behind a van, whom he also allegedly shot once, then again when she fell on the ground.
When the suspect jumped in the car with his girlfriend, he allegedly held her at gunpoint and instructed her to drive to his home near Irving Park.
He later “forced her to go with him to an apartment on Montrose and when they got there she was not able to leave, prosecutors say,” the Fox report stated.
At least 25 people were shot and six died over the weekend in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago, which included the deceased Vera, Pozeulos, and Tavares.
Per the Fox report, authorities arrested Parson-Salas Monday and they eventually located the girlfriend at the apartment but did not report she had been hurt.
Meanwhile, the young woman who had been celebrating her birthday was listed in critical condition at a local hospital.
As the crime wave sweeps across President Joe Biden’s (D) America, citizens are “more likely now than at any time over the past five decades to say there is more crime in their local area than there was a year ago,” Gallup reported in October.
“The 56% of U.S. adults who report an increase in crime where they live marks a five-percentage-point uptick since last year and is the highest by two points in Gallup’s trend dating back to 1972,” the article read.
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