Mother's bank card crucial to tracking down suspect charged with killing Chicago Police Officer Luis Huesca
Xavier Tate
Chicago Police Department
A relative's bank card was crucial to tracking down the man charged with killing Chicago Police Officer Luis Huesca as he returned home from work late last month in Gage Park, officials disclosed Friday.
The suspect, Xavier Tate, 22, had used his mother's card in a store not long before Huesca was gunned down April 21 in the 3100 block of West 56th Street, Police Supt. Larry Snelling said at a news conference as Tate made his first court appearance on first-degree murder charges.
Video from the store helped link Tate to the shooting, he said. A water bottle he was seen buying there was found at Huesca's SUV, which was abandoned blocks from the shooting. Also found were clothing he had worn then.
"Tate's DNA was present on this evidence," Chief of Detectives Antoinette Ursitti said. Investigators also approached the relative and it became "clear" that Tate was involved, she said.
Neither Snelling nor Ursitti gave a motive for the shooting, though they said there was no evidence that he had targeted Huesca, who was still wearing his uniform with a coat that covered it. Tate had been "walking around in the area" before the shooting, Ursitti said.
During Tate's court hearing, Judge Mary Marubio called the shooting "an opportunistic crime" and ordered Tate detained.
“This was a random person who was targeted, an opportunistic crime,” she told Tate as he appeared in a courtroom packed with police officers. “There is no pretrial program that can mitigate the danger you would pose the community.”
After the hearing, Heusca's mother Edith thanked everyone for "supporting us in this horrible pain."
Making her first public comments since the shooting, Huesca said her son "was a good police officer, a good son ... He just made his work the best that he can."
Luis Huesca's brother Emiliano said he felt some relief that Tate had been arrested. "I just want everyone to know that there will be justice done for my brother and I want that justice to be done, put our family at least at peace.
"I hope my brother gets that justice that he deserves," he added.
In ordering Tate to stay in jail, the judge cited an "extensive investigation" that included digital, video and physical evidence against Tate.
A day after the shooting, police released video from the store and, four days later, released more photos and identified Tate as a suspect. An arrest warrant was issued for Tate last Friday afternoon. By then, the reward for information in the case had grown to $100,000.
But Tate continued to elude authorities. Investigators traveled to Wisconsin and Iowa, where Tate has relatives, and pored over video from 90 cameras, Ursitti said. Then Wednesday afternoon, a fugitive task force converged on a Glendale Heights apartment complex and arrested Tate without incident.
Neither Snelling nor Ursitti would say what led police there. Malik Murphy, who lives in the apartment where Tate was found, has been charged in DuPage County with concealing or aiding a fugitive.
Eighty-four-year-old Joyce Compton said she was sitting on her patio when dozens of police cars raced across the lawn of the complex carrying officers in helmets and shields. Compton said she heard one of Tate's relatives lived in the complex. “He came back from somewhere, he was out of town and came back here — which was a mistake,” she said.
Police would not say whether the person who lived in the apartment was a relative of Tate. They also declined to give the relationship of a man who was arrested last week after he allegedly tried to ditch a gun that had been taken from Huesca.
Officers had arrived at a home in the 10800 block of South Hale Street during the afternoon of April 26 to talk to a woman about Huesca’s killing, authorities said. Caschaus Tate, 20, stopped the officers at the door, then went out a back door and was seen tossing Huesca's Glock 9mm pistol over a fence, according to a police report. Tate was arrested and charged with unlawful use of a weapon. He remains in jail.
Mayor Brandon Johnson was notably absent from Huesca’s funeral on Monday after being asked by the officer's family to stay away. Addressing reporters about it for the first time Friday, Johnson said he decided to skip it after speaking with the officer's mother the morning of the funeral.
Johnson did not address the initial push back from the mayor's office that Johnson's attendance was mandatory, as the Sun-Times reported Tuesday. "It was important for me to hear directly from the family," Johnson said. "And once I had a direct conversation with Officer Huesca's mother, that's when we made the commitment to honor her wish."
Huesca had been on the police force for six years and was just two days away from his 31st birthday. He had attended the police academy alongside Officer Andrés Vásquez Lasso, who was fatally shot in the line of duty just over a year ago.
Months later, Chicago Police Officer Aréanah Preston was shot to death as she was returning home to Avalon Park after her shift.
Contributing: Sophie Sherry
