Prosecutors said two teenagers engaged in a 90-minute citywide crime spree last week that left two men dead without any clear benefit.
Cook County Judge James Costello ordered the teens, Marquese D. Hill, 18, and Marshawn Sanders, 17, held in custody pending trial during a detention hearing Saturday at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, according to court records.
Each teen faces first-degree murder, aggravated vehicular hijacking, attempted aggravated vehicular hijacking and aggravated discharge of a firearm charges tied to the string of early morning Feb. 11 crimes, authorities said. Hill, of the Douglas neighborhood, was also charged with aggravated battery of a police officer for allegedly punching officers and hitting them with crutches during his arrest last Thursday, Chicago police said.
Hill and Sanders were tracked throughout the city using a network of public and private surveillance video, including their bus and train ride to the Lakeview, where the crime spree began, authorities said.
Just before 4 a.m., prosecutors said the 6-foot-2-inch, 250-pound Hill and the 5-foot-9, 147-pound Sanders approached a Hyundai Sonata with two occupants parked in the 700 block of West Waveland Avenue.
Inside, Darwin Tirado-Sanchez, 22, sitting in the passenger seat and a 38-year-old man in the driver’s seat, were ordered at gunpoint to turn over their wallets and keys without turning around toward their robbers, prosecutors said in a court proffer of allegations.
At some point, Sanders shot Tirado-Sanchez in the chest. The driver exited the car and attempted to flag down an ambulance, but the ambulance didn’t stop, prosecutors said. Sanders pulled Tirado-Sanchez from the car and Hill entered the Sonata before fleeing the scene, authorities said.
The Sonata was tracked to the Oakland neighborhood on the South Side, when the second victim, Damon Kellums, 45, was found sitting inside his gray Nissan Altima in the 3600 block of South Lake Park Avenue around 4:40 a.m. Surveillance captured the Hyundai blocking the Nissan’s path before both Hill and Sanders entered Kellum’s vehicle and fled the scene. Kellums was found lying on the ground with a gunshot wound to the left eye near the abandoned Hyundai. He was later pronounced dead.
From there, the pair was tracked to a gas station two miles away, where they tried to carjack a red Lexus SUV at gunpoint, according to the proffer. The 70-year-old SUV owner fled, but Hill and Sanders weren’t able to take the SUV because the owner fled with the keys, police said in a statement.
The pair continued south on the Dan Ryan Expressway toward the 8600 block of South Lafayette Avenue, where they successfully carjacked a 2025 Chevrolet Malibu stopped at a traffic light, leaving the Nissan behind, prosecutors said. That driver wasn’t harmed.
The stolen Malibu was later recovered in Gary, Ind. Police launched an expansive investigation, solving the case through work across multiple CPD units, federal law enforcement and Illinois state police.
“Throughout this investigation, members of CPD and its law enforcement partners worked diligently and expeditiously to connect these incidents and arrest the offenders before they could hurt anyone else,” police said in a statement.
When Sanders was arrested on Thursday, police recovered his phone, whose geolocation was tracked to the location of both homicides, each carjacking and the locations along the CTA route he took to the scenes of the crime, prosecutors said.
Hill, arrested the same day, was identified in surveillance stills from the night of the slayings by a police officer who arrested him days after the killings, wearing clothing identical to the clothing worn during the spree, authorities said.
Hill was also identified by staff from Senn High School in Edgewater, who recognized him, prosecutors said.
In approving prosecutors’ detention request, the court noted that the defendants engaged in a “90-minute crime spree,” that they were identified through “voluminous video evidence,” and that the duo committed “a tremendous amount of violence and hijackings, some with no known material gain.”
Both are scheduled to return to court on Wednesday.
