Victim In Road-Rage Shooting Tells Of Harrowing Escape
(CBS) – A community activist is offering a $1,000 reward in the weekend murder of 42-year-old businessman Charles Jones.
Jones, the manager of The Factory gentleman's club, was fatally shot early Sunday in the 1000 block of North North Branch on Goose Island in what was originally described as a road-rage incident turned deadly.
Anti-crime crusader Andrew Holmes posted the reward because the woman accompanying Jones -– Holmes' cousin -- was shot in the back herself.
"It really hits home. It's a different feeling," he tells CBS 2's Derrick Blakley.
"I'm kind of afraid of my life right now," his cousin said in a phone interview. "Right now I'm not trusting a lot of people."
CBS 2 is not naming her because police say she could be in danger.
Jones' girlfriend says a 2005 Buick LaCrosse sideswiped the victim's white Maserati on Division Street. After a confrontation, she says, the Buick driver grabbed a pistol from another car.
"The next thing I remember him walking over to my boyfriend, at this time, he got his hand up in the air, like man, what's going on, and the guy, he just, he pulled the trigger," she says. "At this time, I'm just hysterical because in my mind and my gut, I know he's going to shoot me too."
She says she tried to escape in the Maserati but couldn't get away.
"He ran over to the car where I was and he started shooting. He shot me once in the back, and I just accelerated as fast as I could," she says.
After the shooters fled, she returned to keep Jones conscious until paramedics arrived. Now, she's pleading for witnesses to step forward – anonymously, if they prefer.
"Just tell what you saw. Because Charles did not deserve this at all," she says.
Jones' girlfriend gave police the license plate of the shooter's Buick and she can identify the assailants.
Both Holmes and his cousin say they simply don't know whether Jones' killing was a random event or whether he was targeted.
