Evanston police have charged a 22-year-old man with fatally shooting a 30-year-old Evanstonian Saturday and say social media comments apparently touched off the shooting.
Dominic Connerly, of 2037 Jethro Ave. in Zion, now faces first degree murder charges in the shooting of Floyd Gibert.
Police say Connerly, a former Evanston resident, was on parole at the time of the shooting.
Police Cmdr. Jay Parrott says the shooting is believed to have been the outgrowth of an on-going dispute between two rival groups that was fueled by some recent social media postings.
Connerly will appear in bond court this morning at the Skokie court house, a preliminary hearing on the charges is scheduled for Dec. 23.
The North Region Major Crimes Task Force assisted Evanston police in the investigation.
Another (alleged) career criminal going away
Based on two minutes of internet research, I see that Mr. Connerly was arrested at age 17 and charged with burglary, and he was arrested in June of this year for disobeying a police officer. And it seems to run in the family– his brother attempted to murder a cabbie at Ridge and Howard in 2011.
My guess is that Mr. Connerly didn’t need social media to trigger this behavior.
Rival groups
“…dispute between two rival groups…”
What, Capulet and Montague? Hatfield and McCoy? Apple and Samsung?
Has the word “gang” fallen out of fashion?
Or are the victim and the accused in the two feuding families?
Months back, the Evanston Police Department stated in a Chicago Tribune article that many of the crime problems in Evanston are due to two feuding families (actual kin folk family members also with gang ties).
Do either the victim or accused or both have ties to these two families? If so, it is far past the time for the City of Evanston to bring the hammer down on the feuding families.