The man suspected of hiring a hitman to kill a Beach Park resident blamed the victim for the killings of the man’s brother and nephew on a farm in Mexico, Lake County prosecutors said in new court filings.
The revelations were among those detailed Thursday in a court hearing where a judge ordered Francisco Gutierrez-Vasquez, 43, of North Chicago, to be held in jail.
Gutierrez-Vasquez, authorities say, is suspected of hiring a soccer friend to kill Oscar Ochoa-Tello, 46, on Nov. 5. Ochoa-Tello was shot multiple times at 5:45 a.m. that day as he warmed up his car outside his Beach Park home.
Ochoa-Tello’s son heard the gunshots and drove his father to the hospital. He died three days later in the intensive care unit.
Police arrested Cristian Ruvalcava-Torres of Wisconsin, who is charged with murder for carrying out the shooting, allegedly at the behest of Gutierrez, authorities said.
Gutierrez has not been charged in the murder-for-hire scheme, though authorities said in court documents that he is believed to have paid Torres $1,200 and supplied the revolver used in the shooting.
Gutierrez, according to documents filed in Torres’ case, told investigators that he came to the U.S. to escape drug cartel violence in his native Mexico.
“Gutierrez wanted the victim killed because the victim had Gutierrez’s brother and nephew killed on their ranch in La Luz,” according to a document filed in Torres’ case. The document did not offer additional details of the deaths.
After Torres was arrested and questioned, he implicated Gutierrez, authorities said.
At Thursday’s hearing, Assistant State’s Attorney Savannah Halcomb told Judge Michael Nerheim that Gutierrez was a flight risk, and he has outstanding warrants stemming from older cases. In one, he was convicted of attacking a man with a machete in a dispute over a parking spot, Halcomb said.
Torres told police that he had met Gutierrez about a year ago while playing soccer. Since then, Gutierrez had given Torres $200 to buy walkie-talkies, $80 for groceries and money for gas, according to the detention petition in the Torres case.
“The $1,200 in cash Torres was paid for shooting the victim was used to pay his outstanding rent and a few other bills,” the petition said.
The document said Torres went to Ochoa-Tello’s house on Nov. 3 and 4, but couldn’t make himself shoot the victim. On Nov. 5, Torres approached the victim in his car and fired five times from a revolver that Gutierrez had provided, authorities said. Ochoa-Tello was hit by four rounds, police said.
Authorities said they learned of a barn in the area where they located the car used in the shooting, along with a .38-caliber revolver believed to be the murder weapon.
