Fabiola Pacheco Delacruz was only 18 when she had her daughter, so in a way, she said, they grew up together as close as best friends.
Her daughter, Zulma Daniela Calderon Pacheco, was joyful and hardworking, her mother said. The 21-year-old worked at a Little Village Popeyes while she figured out plans to go back to school. She was the oldest of five and she always helped her mom around the house, her loved ones said.
But Calderon Pacheco’s young life was violently interrupted when she was shot and killed while on the dance floor with her boyfriend at a west suburban nightclub on March 8. A bouncer who wasn’t supposed to have a gun fired a shot during a scuffle at Mansion Live nightclub in Stone Park, prosecutors alleged at a court hearing on Tuesday in a courthouse in Maywood.
The bullet struck Calderon Pacheco, prosecutors said, even though she had nothing to do with the fight.
“Me arrebataron la mitad de mi vida. Half of my life was taken from me,” the victim’s mother, Fabiola Pacheco Delacruz said while crying.
The tragic shooting that happened as revelers danced early in the morning on a Saturday spurred a lawsuit against the nightclub and felony charges against the bouncer, Kevin Henley, 35. Tearful family members spoke out at a news conference in the Loop on Tuesday, asking for answers.
Henley is charged with involuntary manslaughter and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, both class four felonies.
During Tuesday’s hearing, though, Henley’s public defender argued that the gun went off as her client was attacked.
Judge Shawnte Raines-Welch denied prosecutors’ petition to hold Henley in jail while awaiting trial, noting the low-level of the charges and Henley’s relatively minimal criminal history, but ordered him to electronic monitoring.
“I don’t think anyone disagrees that these are tragic facts but with an unintended outcome,” Raines-Welch said.
Two weeks after her daughter’s death, Pacheco is still inconsolable every time she speaks about her daughter. She said she’s found strength in her other children and in God.
Though the suspect has been charged, nothing will take away her pain and that of her family, she said.
“I still wait for her to come home,” said the mother.
Pacheco and Joel Chimborazo, her daughter’s boyfriend of five years, on Monday filed a three-count wrongful death lawsuit against the nightclub. After the name of Henley and the security company he worked for, JMC Security LLC, became public Monday, her attorneys said Tuesday they planned to add them as defendants to the lawsuit.
Pacheco said the club’s management is responsible for hiring a security guard without the proper training to handle conflict. But she also doesn’t want any other incidents to happen.
“No one deserves to go through this. I don’t wish this type of pain upon anyone else,” Pacheco said. “He [the suspect] may be in jail for a few years, but I will never have my daughter back.”
During Tuesday’s court hearing, Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Jose Villarreal said that Henley was barred from having a gun, as he was already on probation for a gun offense. Further, he said, bouncers aren’t supposed to hold weapons at the club.
Chimborazo noticed a fight break out while on the dance floor, Villarreal said. Then he heard the shot and saw his girlfriend fall to the floor.
Moments earlier, Henley had been in the middle of the altercation, Villarreal said, which was caught on camera. He was surrounded and punched by several men.
Henley grabbed a gun from his waistband, raised it, made a windmill motion with his arms and the gun discharged, he said. Henley then hid the weapon in a bathroom and left, he said.
Henley’s attorney, though, argued that her client should not be detained while awaiting trial, noting that the felony charges he faces could come with a probation sentence. She said he carried a gun because he was previously threatened at the club. The video shows that he wasn’t trying to aim at anyone when the gun went off, she argued.
“It is clear from looking at the video that my client was being punched from all sides,” she said. “The time from when he was completely surrounded and the gun went off is a matter of less than 5 seconds.”
Raines-Welch took the defendant to task for having a gun he wasn’t supposed to have, but said that appellate judges have frequently reversed orders for pretrial detention in cases with similar facts.
Meanwhile, at the news conference in the Loop, the family’s attorneys said they will be investigating whether the nightclub learned anything after a prior shooting there. In 2020, a man was fatally shot outside the facility. Mansion also took over Club Allure, a strip club that was embroiled in controversy with a 2014 lawsuit from nuns in the nearby Missionary Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo convent.
“We’re going to be able to take depositions of the owner and management of Mansion Live to find out what they learned from the 2020 shooting, and what did they do about it?” said attorney Timothy Cavanagh. “It’s pretty apparent from looking at it now that they didn’t do a lot, they didn’t learn their lesson.”
The lawsuit alleges that Mansion Live failed to provide appropriate security to ensure the safety of its patrons, failed to properly train and supervise its security guards, allowed its security guard to carry a concealed firearm and fire it inside the club when it was unsafe to do so and was careless and negligent in the operation of Mansion Live, among other allegations.
“Security guards are supposed to protect innocent patrons like Zulma Daniela Calderon Pacheco from danger not fatally shoot them. Firing a gun into a crowded dance floor is reckless and negligent conduct by any measure,” Cavanagh said. “Zulma’s family and her boyfriend are heartbroken and traumatized and want answers about how this could have happened.”
Calderon Pacheco’s family members and boyfriend were in tears as they recounted what happened and remembered their loved one.
“It was very unexpected. I saw the fight happen,” Chimborazo said. “The dude just decided to pull out a gun and everything happened so fast. She just dropped behind me.”
As soon as Calderon Pacheco was shot, Chimborazo said he acted fast to try to get Calderon Pacheco help, moving out of the way so others could step in and help.
Chimborazo said that while Calderon Pacheco went through rough patches throughout their five year relationship, they were getting to a point where they were starting to “fall in love again.”
“Every time we had our up and downs, like we both knew where home was,” Chimborazo said. “So even though we were mad at each other, stuff like that, we would always go back to each other, no matter what.”
In the complaint, Chimborazo is alleging negligent infliction of emotional distress.
The company that employed Henley, JMC Security LLC, was involuntarily dissolved March 14 because it failed to file an annual report in 2024, according to records from the Illinois Secretary of State and a spokesperson.
The company had operated out of west suburban River Grove since 2023, according to the records. Stone Park Police Chief Christopher Pavini said Henley does not have a FOID card and was not licensed as a security guard.
“The fundamental question here is why did this establishment, Mansion Live, which has thousands of patrons there … why did they hire a security guard that has a criminal history, that has no right to carry a gun under Illinois law, doesn’t have a FOID card and wasn’t properly trained?” Cavanagh said. “Mansion Live is going to have to answer for that, Henley is going to have to answer for that and the security firm is going to have to answer for that.”
A petition was also posted on Change.org demanding Mansion nightclub to be shut down following the shooting. It has so far garnered over 5,300 signatures.
That’s what Pacheco wants too. Nothing will mend her pain, she said, but she hopes that justice is served and that the club shuts its doors indefinitely.
“It’s not fair that they killed my daughter. I miss my daughter. I want my daughter here,” she cried as her youngest daughter and other family members tried to console her. “They shouldn’t have killed her.”
