No Bond For Teen Charged With Killing Boy In Front Of Victim's Mom
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A judge has denied bond for the 17-year-old man accused of killing another teenager in front of the victim's mother and two brothers, outside a Back of the Yards laundromat last week.
Alan Padilla, of the 5000 block of South Michigan Avenue, is charged with one count of first-degree murder in the shooting death of 17-year-old Jalen Stogner, in the parking lot of a laundromat in the 4800 block of South Ashland Avenue on Friday.
Jalen, of the 6600 block of South Rhodes Avenue, was gunned down while helping his mother unload laundry at a laundromat five miles from his home. His mother said they used that laundromat because she believed the Back of the Yards neighborhood was safer than where they live in Englewood.
CBS 2's Suzanne Le Mignot reports Jalen's mother felt helpless as she watched her son die in front of her.
"Just to see my son lying in that puddle of blood, and I couldn't do nothing to save him," Marla Stogner said Saturday, describing her last moments with Jalen. "I just called and screaming his name and he just wasn't responding."
Stogner said her son had just helped her bring two loads of laundry into the laundromat Friay afternoon. As he walked out, a young man Jalen didn't know tried asking him a question.
"I don't know what he said, and then my son asked him, 'What you said?' and the guy reached over like that and pulled his gun and shot him," Stogner said.
She said she always made the more than 20-block trek northwest of her Englewood home to the Laundromat at 48th Street and Ashland Avenue, because she felt the Back of the Yards neighborhood was safer.
"I just never thought nothing like that would happen," she said.
Jalen was shot not only in front of his mother, but his two younger brothers as well.
"They're going to be traumatized, you know," Stogner said.
Stogner said, after moving to Chicago from Iowa when Jalen was 15, gang members tried recruiting him – even breaking both sides of his jaw.
After some brushes with the law as a juvenile, Stogner said her son was focused on the future. He was entering culinary school. His passion was cooking. Now, she said she must do what no parent ever wants to think about: plan her son's funeral.
"The police are doing their best. … but they can only do so much," Stogner said. "We're fighting a war. We need some soldiers over here to help with this war right here in the city, 'cause that's what this is. A war. … Get control back of our city and our streets because too many kids are dying."
Stogner is a phlebotomist at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County. Her son was taken there after the shooting.
She said the hospital has the best lifesaving team in the city, and she called the hospital begging them to do everything they could to save her son, but it was just too late.
Padilla was due back in court on Tuesday.
