Five years for bar shooting
A judge sentenced an East Chicago man to five years Tuesday for his second bar shooting in just over a year.
Justin Gomez, 27, pleaded guilty Jan. 13 to battery resulting in serious bodily injury and unlawful carrying of a handgun.
Court records state he shot a man who tried to break up a Griffith bar fight.
“When you’re in here, (I haven’t had a problem),” Judge Samuel Cappas told him. “When you get out on the street, you become a different person.”
Griffith Police responded at 2:25 a.m. Dec. 10, 2023 to Shades of Time bar, 1813 W. 45th St., for a reported shooting.
The victim — a bystander — said he was trying to stop his friend from fighting a man in the parking lot when he was shot. Court records state he was shot twice — in the right thigh and back/side, which exited through his abdomen. He was airlifted to a Chicago hospital.
The bar’s security video showed Gomez’s brother exiting the bar when he bumped into another man. Gomez, leaving behind him, threw a punch. The men start migrating to the parking lot to fight when Gomez takes out a gun, drops it, picks it up and fires two shots.
Gomez was sentenced to 18 months probation on Oct. 10 for a different bar shooting in August 2022. He was caught on video shooting a man after an argument inside El Sombrero bar in East Chicago. He was also ordered to undergo anger management as part of that plea deal.
Man pleads guilty as getaway driver in witness murder-for-hire
A former Gary man pleaded guilty Tuesday as the getaway driver in a 2010 murder-for-hire.
Jamell Brooks, 34, signed a plea deal Feb. 27 in the U.S. District Court in Hammond for accessory after the fact. His sentencing hearing is June 24.
Federal prosecutors say high-ranking Sin City Deciples member Ronnie Major paid his brother-in-law Antoine Gates, who is Brooks’ stepfather, to kill Jocelyn “Pie Face” Blair, 31, on Dec. 19, 2010. She was shot inside Coney Island Restaurant in Gary.
Brooks said during Tuesday’s hearing he was “forced to participate” and Gates “tried” to have him kill Blair at the Gary motorcycle gang’s clubhouse.
But after leaving the Sin City Deciples Club, Michael Rivera went in a car with Blair, while Gates and Brooks rode in another car, to Coney Island on Broadway, court records show. Gates went inside, and the man said he heard seven or eight shots, according to court documents.
“I didn’t know he was going to kill the girl, but I knew he wanted to,” Brooks said Tuesday, later adding, “I’ve never seen someone go into a restaurant and kill somebody.”
Gates returned to the car and said he shot Blair in the head and had accidentally shot Rivera in the thigh, court records state.
Blair was a witness against Major in a 2008 Gary shooting. Major was convicted at a Lake County trial of battery in 2011 and released in 2012, records show.
According to court documents, Major reportedly gave Gates “10 stacks” — or $10,000 — for Blair’s homicide.
Rape trial opens
A trial opened Tuesday for a Gary man charged with sexually assaulting a 16-year-old runaway girl.
Kenneth Y. Jones, 46, is charged with rape, a Level 3 felony, and criminal confinement, a Level 6 felony. He has pleaded not guilty.
Gary detectives responded June 17 to the home on the 1400 block of Delaware after police got a tip that a girl was held there.
When her father showed up, the girl said she had stayed there for a week. A second man offered to give her a ride home in a dark SUV but took her to the Delaware Street house. She later said he tried to have sex with her in the vehicle.
At the house, another girl, “Nikki,” tried to undress her in an upstairs bedroom. The second man tried to have sex with her but she refused. Both Jones and the second man forced her to perform a sex act.
Jones blew smoke from a “glass pipe” in her face, making her dizzy, the affidavit states. She later guessed it was crack cocaine. The second man told her he had sex with young girls, and told her not to “say anything about it” or he would go to jail.
In a police interview, Jones denied touching the girl or blowing smoke in her face but admitted the girl was being held in the home.
Post-Tribune archives contributed.
