A man has been charged in the brutal murder of a father who was killed earlier this month while playing Pokemon Go in a northern Chicago suburb park with his young daughter.
Khiryan Monroe, 20, turned himself in to Chicago police on 26 July, nearly two weeks after he’d allegedly shot and killed Servando Hamros, 29, in an Evanston park, located about 12 miles north of downtown Chicago.
The 20-year-old, who is from the northern suburb and faces one count of first-degree murder, made his first court appearance on Wednesday. Court documents revealed more details about the deadly 14 July encounter between the accused and the 29-year-old father of two.
According to Hamros’s family and authorities, the young father, who was only weeks away from celebrating his 30th birthday, had gone to Eggleston Park with his youngest daughter to play the popular augmented reality game.
While the pair were playing along a footpath in the park, Hamros reportedly noticed a couple engaging in sexual intercourse and began filming the pair who were naked from the waist down, authorities revealed Wednesday during a court, NBC Chicago reported.
The pair reportedly then fled the grassy area on foot, leaving behind their belongings which allegedly included both of their cell phones, prosecutors said during Wednesday’s proceedings.
When the couple came back, they were reportedly armed with what forensic analysts revealed as being consistent with either a glock or ghost 9-millimetre gun.
Police, who were called to the area at 9.06pm to respond to reports of gunfire, arrived at the scene to discover Hamros lying face down on the ground with multiple gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead later.
Outside the courtroom on Wednesday, a tearful Servando Camargo, Hamros’s father, relayed to reporters how his son “was a good person,” and had a lot to be excited about life, including a new job he was set to start the week after he was murdered.
“When you can walk through a park where it’s supposed to be a safe zone, and somebody shoots you in the head that doesn’t like you or doesn’t like what you’re doing,” said Mr Camargo. “I felt like something ripped out of my heart.”
In a Facebook post shared less than 24 hours after Hamros’s death, the mother of the victim talked about the daunting moments that not only faced her son in his final moments, but her 6-year-old granddaughter who stood only feet away from him when he was gunned down.
“She had to find help while watching her dad die,” wrote Dawn Hamros-Camargo. In a separate interview with NBC Chicago, the victim’s mother relayed how her granddaughter had even FaceTimed her family shortly after the shooting, shouting “Daddy’s shot.”
“She Facetimed us, ‘Daddy’s shot, Daddy’s shot. Please come help me, please come help me,’” her grandmother said in an interview earlier this month. “And then to see her vomiting on the side of the police car dealing with this is horrible. No child should lose their parent this way and no mother should ever bury their child... for no reason. No reason at all.”
“I am totally broken and will never be the same,” she added in her Facebook post commemorating her son, asking that people pray for her son who was a “wonderful loving” Aribela, 6, and 10-year-old Juliana.
In court on Wednesday, the attorney representing Monroe argued that his defendant had been armed, but had been acting in self defense. The defendant alleges that Hamros had robbed the 20-year-old and the person he’d been with in the park.
“He was an armed robber, and these kids went back to get their telephones," said attorney Herb Goldberg in an interview with CBS. “They were buck naked at the time that they left.”
Court documents from police revealed on Wednesday that authorities had “suspected that an armed robbery had taken place and the victim took two cell phones from the defendant,” but the timeline for those events remains unclear.
Those allegations, however, have not squared with the family of the murdered 29-year-old father of two.
“My son would never rob anyone. My son despised thieves and people who robbed people,” wrote Ms Hamros-Camargo on Facebook on Thursday morning, noting that her son and granddaughter both had “the newest iPhones (iPhone 13 Pro Max)” and “needed for nothing”.
“He was to start a new high paying job this week. My son would have never ever put his daughter in danger,” she added, accusing the suspect of using the 10 days after the shooting to “get his lies and fake alibi’s together”. “I have never been so angry and hurt! How dare they try and make my son look bad.”
During the court proceedings on Wednesday, the family reportedly yelled out “that’s a lie!” when the attorney began presenting documents from authorities that said there was a suspected armed robbery carried out.
“My granddaughter is the witness of this whole thing. She’s very tough and every day she tells me another detail so if they want to say their lies,” Mr Camargo said.
The Independent reached out to an attorney representing Monroe but did not hear back immediately.
Monroe is being held without bail and his next hearing is scheduled in August.
