Man found guilty of shooting his cousin in Elk Grove Village motel
A Cook County judge found Deon Moore guilty of the 2017 shooting death of his cousin, Larry Moore, 33, in an Elk Grove Village motel room.
Judge Steven Goebel also found Moore, 36, guilty of unlawful use of a weapon following a three-day bench trial.
During videotaped police interrogations shown Monday, the Chicago man insisted the shooting was accidental. Moore said it followed an alcohol-fueled argument that unfolded around midnight on May 19, 2017, in the motel room where Larry Moore had been staying.
"I don't want to spend the rest of my life in jail ... for an accident," Deon Moore said during the interrogation.
Prosecutors say Deon Moore remained in the room on the 1000 block of West Devon Avenue until about 11 a.m. the next day. He later showed up at the home of the victim's mother, Debra Moore (who is also Deon Moore's aunt) and pretended to grieve with other family members.
Moore's attorneys insist he never intended to hurt his cousin, who they say had a temper and was known to drink excessively. They say Larry Moore became aggressive and that frightened Deon Moore, who considered Larry Moore to be like a brother.
Deon Moore told detectives during the interrogation that Larry Moore "kept on challenging my manhood ... that's not cool," according to prosecutors,
Moore told police the conversation grew heated and he picked up the gun to "cold-cock" his cousin across the face to quiet him down, but the gun fired.
"It all happened so fast," said Moore, who demonstrated for the detectives how he struck the victim. "I was freaked out. I didn't know what to do."
"I'm hoping he'll wake up," he said.
Asked during the interrogation why he didn't call police, Moore said he feared he'd "go down for it, even if it was an accident." Asked why he remained in the room for hours after his cousin died, Moore said he could not leave because buses don't run late at night. He told officers he caught a bus later the next morning from the motel to the Rosemont El station and took the train to Chicago, where he said he threw the gun into Lake Michigan. He later told police he put the gun in a bag that he left on the train.
Detectives questioned Moore's story, suggesting the physical evidence contradicts his version.
"How you're describing that happened and the physics behind it ... it's not adding up," one of the detectives said. "Was there some other struggle? He has an injury to the back of his head. There's something missing."