Biggest street-gang trial in recent Chicago history begins
CHICAGO — Six purported leaders of Chicago’s powerful Hobos street gang went on trial Wednesday in a case that could provide a rare look inside the kind of criminal activity fueling gun violence in the nation’s third-largest city.
A prosecutor displayed photos of killing scenes and held up assault rifles during opening statements, telling jurors the defendants murdered, maimed and tortured their way into controlling lucrative drug markets on Chicago’s South Side.
The six men charged with racketeering conspiracy were not “a group of misguided youth” but “an all-star team of the worst of the worst” who “terrorized the city,” federal prosecutor Patrick Otlewski said.
The prosecutor began with a chilling account of how another defendant, purported Hobos hit man Paris Poe, allegedly killed government witness Keith Daniels in 2013, shooting him around 25 times at close range while his horrified stepchildren, a 4-year-old girl and 6-year-old boy, screamed inside a car.
The family had just pulled into a parking lot after returning from Sunday dinner at a grandparent’s house, the kids still playing with toys in the back seat, when Poe emerged from behind shrubbery and started firing, Otlewski said.