Teen 'serial killer' responsible for 6 killings on Chicago's Southwest Side in 2020, officials say

A man now charged with six killings on the Southwest Side in 2020 was labeled “a serial killer” Wednesday by officials who said he didn’t know any of the victims and targeted a car carrying three children in one of the attacks.

Antonio Reyes, 21, was being held in Cook County Jail for a June 2020 slaying when he was charged this month with five other deaths between March 2 and Nov. 9, 2020, Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling told reporters gathered at Public Safety Headquarters.

“This speaks to the level of disregard this offender had toward human life,” Snelling said. “It’s difficult to comprehend how anyone could easily take someone’s life, and especially so many in one year.”

Reyes has been in custody since he was arrested in December 2020 in the slaying of Luis Davalos Garcia that June. He was between the ages of 16 and 17 when he allegedly committed the six slayings he's charged with. When he was being held at Cook County Jail, Reyes was charged with stabbing his cellmate with a shank in 2022.

Reyes was arraigned Tuesday in the 2020 deaths of Claudio Cossio in April, Francisco Magana in March, Damian Duran in May, and Jose Martinez and Justin Gonzalez, killed a day apart in November.

“None of these people had ever met Antonio Reyes before, and there’s no reason to suspect Antonio Reyes had any reason to target them,” Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke said, referring to the victims of what she described as “serial murders.”

O’Neill Burke noted that Martinez was taking his family to buy a new puppy when he was gunned down. Snelling said the 31-year-old man was “killed in a barrage of bullets” in front of his three children, ages 3 to 9.

Another victim was shot and killed while going to a gas station, O’Neill Burke said, and a third was killed in a parked car on Palm Sunday.

“We have one extremely violent shooter who has been taken off the street today,” O’Neill Burke said. “Justice will be served, and that is a good thing. But we have a lot more work to do.”

Garien Gatewood, the deputy mayor for community safety, credited detectives’ work “to remove a serial killer from the streets.”

Chief of Detectives Antionette Ursitti said there were two major breaks in the investigation: linking a .40-caliber handgun recovered in the summer of 2020 to multiple shootings, and using Reyes’ “social media footprint” to directly connect him to some of the slayings.

Snelling indicated police will "continue to work on cases" involving Reyes.

Ursitti noted that detectives "are going to continue to look at additional cases to see associates that he may have been with and their role in those incidents."

At his arraignment Tuesday, Reyes wore a blue-green jumpsuit issued to high-risk detainees at Cook County Jail as he was led out of a holding cell to his seat beside his assistant public defender.

In the courtroom gallery, nearly two dozen friends and relatives of Reyes’ alleged victims stared intently at him during the brief hearing.

“We knew that [Reyes] was locked up for killing somebody already, but we didn’t know about all these other murders,” said Cossio’s mother, Nohemi Cossio. “It was like he was killing someone every month.”

Also in the gallery was Luis Davalos, whose 26-year-old son, Luis Davalos Garcia, was shot and killed, allegedly by Reyes, in June 2020.

The elder Davalos flew from Texas to Chicago to attend Reyes' arraignment after learning from the state's attorney's office that Reyes would face charges in another five killings.

 Because of COVID-19 pandemic measures in place at the time of Reyes' arrest for Davalos Garcia's slaying, the arraignment four years ago was held via Zoom, and Reyes' face was not shown because he was only 17 at the time, Luis Davalos said.

 "Tuesday was the first time I have seen him in the flesh," Davalos said. "I got chills in that moment. I thought, how is that possible that a human being can become such a monster?"

Davalos Garcia grew up in Chicago and graduated from Whitney Young High School. He was working as a brand representative for Topo Chico and Coca-Cola and had gone to pick up his girlfriend when he was allegedly shot by Reyes.

 Police at the time told Davalos Garcia's father they had little to go on because there seemed to be no motive for the killing.

 "They said, 'We think it was just a wrong-place, wrong-time kind of thing,'" Davalos recalled. "The kept saying, 'We got nothing, we got nothing.’

 "Why did it happen to him? He was completely undeserving," Davalos said. "I don't want to be unfair to any other victims' families, they all seem like they were good people, but Luis had a very promising future, everything was looking up for him."

Reyes had previously been charged with attempted murder for another shooting on Thanksgiving Day in 2020 that badly wounded a 27-year-old man in Gage Park.

Two men have also been charged with killing a man who witnessed the slaying of Davalos Garcia — the first victim Reyes was charged with killing.