A federal choose in Chicago sentenced a gang member to greater than 16 years in jail for capturing an ATF agent within the head final yr.
A jury convicted Ernesto Godinez, 29, in June for the high-profile May 2018 capturing of ATF agent Kevin Crump. The capturing occurred early within the morning, when just a few individuals might be seen wandering the world within the Back of the Yards the place it occurred.
Federal brokers had been attempting to switch a monitoring system on a automobile within the 4400 block of South Hermitage. They might be seen on surveillance video, and so may Godinez, who was noticed scurrying into a close-by gangway.
Moments later, 5 gunshots erupted from the mouth of that gangway in two seconds, prosecutors mentioned. And then, Godinez might be seen darting away. Meanwhile one of many bullets had torn by Crump’s neck, close to the sting of the left facet of his jaw, and exited immediately between his eyes.
On Wednesday, Crump described to the choose the moments after he was shot and was being taken to the hospital.
“I felt blood pouring from my face and somehow making its way to the back of my mouth, obstructing my breathing,” Crump mentioned.
The agent anticipated to go out and presumably not get up, he mentioned.
Federal prosecutors known as the assault on Crump “brazen, callous, and cowardly.” They additionally mentioned Crump suffered everlasting harm to his imaginative and prescient. They mentioned he “no longer has tear ducts in [his] left eye, has nerve damage to the left side of his face, … [and] has no vision in the upper left quadrant of his left eye.”
“It truly is a miracle that agent Crump didn’t die that morning,” federal prosecutor Kavitha Babu instructed the choose.
Babu mentioned the opposite brokers needed to “pick agent Crump up by his limbs” and “had to perform first aid on Agent Crump . . . not knowing if he was going to live.”
She additionally famous Crump had been an agent for less than 4 months when he was shot and had simply come to Chicago. “Four months into the job, he was shot through the neck, with a bullet exiting through his eyes.”
Babu argued a prolonged sentence can also be wanted to guard the Back of the Yards neighborhood and deter others.
“It cannot be that you shoot a federal agent in the head and you still get out of prison young enough to go right back to being a shooter,” she mentioned. Godinez is 29.
Gal Pissetzky, is now argued that Godinez shouldn’t be punished extra as a result of he shot a federal agent. In truth, prosecutors say he thought he was capturing at rival gang members.
Pissetzky tried to counter the deterrence argument, saying a harsh sentence for Godinez would solely anger younger individuals within the neighborhood, that’s “because they would believe, possibly, that an injustice was done by sentencing somebody for such a long period of time when they have police officers in the neighborhood harassing them.”
Though prosecutors mentioned at trial nobody else may have pulled the set off, protection attorneys argued a couple of particular person appeared on the surveillance video, together with an individual in a white shirt. Godinez had been carrying black.
Prosecutors mentioned Godinez, a member of the Latin Saints, had been patrolling the world early May 4, 2018, when the ATF got down to exchange the monitoring system on a car. An advance workforce had already pushed by the world to scout for hazard, information present. It had given an all-clear.
That’s when a second workforce arrived, and a gaggle of brokers in road garments stepped out of a automobile to switch the monitoring system. Nothing recognized the brokers as regulation enforcement. Godinez thought they have been rival gang members, prosecutors alleged.
Shortly after the three:18 a.m. capturing, prosecutors say Godinez hopped right into a automobile along with his girlfriend, Victoria Jean-Baptiste. He allegedly instructed her, “I feel good . . . f— that flake.”
“Flake” is slang for a rival gang member.
When Baptiste took the stand throughout Godinez’s trial, she mentioned Godinez instructed her, “I feel good.” Then he mentioned, “f—.” Then, she mentioned, he added “one thing about…