Elgin man who hid body for fear of retaliation avoids jail

An Elgin man who said he helped hide a dead body because he feared gang retaliation was sentenced Wednesday to 30 months of probation.

Martin Zavala, 20, was one of three men convicted in connection with the Sept. 17, 2006, shooting death of 29-year-old Juan Fernandez of Elgin. He faced up to five years in prison after pleading guilty this fall to concealment of a homicidal death.

At a sentencing hearing Wednesday, Zavala told Kane County Judge Timothy Q. Sheldon he panicked when Fernandez was shot dead in front of Zavala's house on the 400 block of Center Street.

He said he helped stuff the body into a car - later abandoned in Streamwood - because contacting police would have made him a "snitch" open to retaliation from neighborhood gangs.

"I'm not saying it was right," he said in an emotional statement to the judge. "I didn't want nothing to do with it. I just wanted it away from my house, away from me, away from my family."

Defense witnesses painted Fernandez, a registered sex offender and Zavala's former cousin-in-law, as a "dangerous man" with a violent history. Fernandez once attacked Zavala's father, witnesses said, and Zavala had grown to fear him.

Zavala said he was in front of his house on the night of the shooting when he sensed something dangerous was about to happen and ran to the back yard. After a gunshot rang out, he said, he returned to find a body, which he didn't immediately recognize as Fernandez.

"I was scared," he said. "What was I supposed to do?"

Prosecutor Greg Sams said the defense's portrayal of Fernandez amounted to calling his killing a "public service murder." He asked the judge to give Zavala jail time.

"They muddied up Juan Fernandez ... basically to say he deserved this," Sams said.

Zavala's co-defendants Adrian Pesina, 24, and Edgar Juarez, 20, both of Elgin, were sentenced last week. Pesina, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, was sentenced to 17 years in prison. Juarez pleaded guilty to concealment of a homicidal death and was sentenced to three years in prison.

Pesina had claimed he accidentally shot Fernandez in the neck during an altercation at a party. Zavala's attorney said the men doused the body with gasoline to remove fingerprints, but it was never set on fire.