Prosecutors say that Chicago’s teenager killed six people for nine months in 2020

A victim had gone to a service station to buy a soda. Another was sitting in a car with a friend. A third was taking his three children to buy a puppy.

The prosecutors said this week that a man from Chicago, Antonio Reyes, fatally fired six people in the city for a period of nine months in 2020, starting when he was 16 years old.

In all but one of the cases, Reyes seemed to have no connection with his victims and was pointing to “complete strangers,” said the state lawyer of Cook Condado, Eileen O’Neill Burke, in an interview.

“It seems that I was only doing it for emotion, killing people, repeatedly,” he said.

Reyes, now 21 years old, has been in a cook county jail since he was arrested in December 2020 and accused of murder in one of the cases. Prosecutors said Wednesday that he had been accused of five additional murders and four murder attempts, all occurring in 2020.

Police said Reyes had been linked to the murders through shells of a .40 caliber gun, publications on social networks and other evidence. Reyes has also been accused of using a rod to try to kill his cellmate in jail, Burke said.

The lawyer of Reyes did not immediately respond to a request for comments on Thursday. Reyes was prosecuted for five murder positions and four positions of murder attempt on Tuesday and declared himself innocent, said the state prosecutor’s office.

He was arrested without bail for a previous position of murder in the murder of Luis Davalos García, 26, on June 24, 2020, the office said. He is waiting for the trial in that case.

Reyes knew only one of his victims, Damian Duran, who received a deadly shot during a drug agreement on May 1, 2020, prosecutors said. Reyes was affiliated with the Latin Kings gang, but none of the murders seemed to be connected to the status of his gang, prosecutors said.

“It is sad to think of a 17 -year -old who commits serial murders in the course of nine months, how many people were taken,” Burke said at a press conference with the Chicago Police on Wednesday.

In a seemingly random attack, on November 8, 2020, prosecutors said, Reyes fatally shot José Martínez, 31, while Martínez was in a car, taking his three children, of 3, 7 and 9 years old, to buy a puppy.

Reyes had driven Martínez and “showed a gang signal” and then led around the block twice before he firmed fatally, according to judicial records.

Larry Snelling, the Chicago Police Superintendent, said Reyes had been accused of murder attempt for shooting the children.

“This speaks of the level of contempt that this criminal had towards human life,” Snelling said at the press conference on Wednesday. “It’s hard to understand how someone could easily take someone’s life, especially so many in a year.”

He said the police would continue to investigate whether Reyes could have been involved in additional acts of violence.

“We have six lives and who knows how many may have been responsible?” Snelling said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.