Man charged with Wheeling murder done when he was 15

An 18-year-old man was charged with murder Saturday and ordered held without bond in connection with a gang slaying in Wheeling that happened when he was a 15-year-old boy.

On the night of Sept. 3, 2006, Juan Gomez and two fellow gang members carried out a "mission" that had been ordered by the leader of their gang "to shoot members of a rival gang," said Maria C. McCarthy, an assistant Cook County state's attorney.

After being unable to locate any rival gang members in one apartment complex, the trio drove to the Colonial Townhomes complex, at the southwest corner of Route 83 and McHenry Road in Wheeling, McCarthy said.

Wearing dark clothes and a hoodie, Gomez hid behind a bush with a friend for several minutes, before he fired one shot from a .12 gauge shotgun at 9:55 p.m., McCarthy said.

Gomez "aimed the shotgun at the victim's stomach because he wanted the victim to suffer and not die quickly," McCarthy said. "The defendant said that when he fired the shotgun, it had a strong kick and the victim was shot in the head instead."

Chavario White, 15, a Buffalo Grove High School student from Wheeling, was pronounced dead about a half-hour later at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights.

The story came to light after a fellow gang member who said he drove the car that night was arrested in 2007 and gave a detailed videotaped confession that named Gomez as the killer, McCarthy said.

Witnesses said Gomez sported a new teardrop tattoo on his face shortly after that murder.

"In the gang world, a teardrop tattoo signifies that you killed someone," McCarthy said.

About a dozen loved ones, some crying, watched in the Rolling Meadows courtroom as Judge Margarita Judge Kulys Hoffman ordered Gomez held without bond until his next court appearance on Monday.

Gomez, who lived in Wheeling at the time of the killing, now lives with his parents and siblings and works in construction, said Assistant Public Defender Stephen Herczeg.

Four months before the 2006 shooting, a juvenile judge sentenced Gomez to community service and banned him from any gang activity after the boy was charged with defacing property. Gomez violated his supervision, and served seven days in the juvenile detention center a month before the slaying. He moved to Lake County and was sentenced to a year's probation in that county after he tested positive for marijuana and attempted to pass a drug test by smuggling in another person's urine, McCarthy said.

If convicted of first-degree murder, Gomez faces a prison sentence of 25 years to life.