Man apologized after shooting 17-year-old to death

A man who apologized to a longtime acquaintance after shooting at him and killing a 17-year-old boy has been charged in the attack this spring in the Chatham neighborhood.
Jalen Armstrong, 17, was declared dead about an hour after the shooting about 12:25 p.m. April 6 in the 800 block of East 81 st Street that also targeted four other people. Today, Juan Robinson, 22, in a court hearing before Cook County Judge James Brown was ordered held without bail after eluding police since soon after the shooting.
Armstrong and four other teens and young men, including a 23-year-old man Robinson has known for a decade, were walking on 81st Street when one of them saw Robinson walking toward them in the middle of the street with a gun.
The one who saw Robinson told the others, “There goes Suicide and he has a gun,” using Robinson’s street name to warn them.
Robinson started shooting at the group, and they began running. A second attacker, who prosecutors say Robinson calls his cousin, came onto the block and started firing at the group also.
Armstrong and the 23-year-old who knows Robinson took cover behind a school bus, and the man shouted “Yo Bro it’s me,” trying to get Robinson to stop shooting. Both gunmen continued firing, however, with several gunshots hitting the bus and one hitting Armstrong, with witnesses reporting they heard as many as 25 gunshots.
Armstrong, of the 8000 block of South Ingleside Avenue, told the man he was with that he had been shot in the leg, and the man carried Jalen to in front of a store on Cottage Grove Avenue, . Armstrong lost consiciousness there, and died at Advocate Christ Medical Center.
That night, Robinson called the 23-year-old and told him that he was sorry Armstrong had been killed, as Armstrong wasn’t the intended target. Robinson also told several other people about the shooting.
Investigators identified Robinson and the other man—who has not yet been arrested—as the attackers after several witnesses told them Robinson was one of the shooters and picked him from photos of several possible suspects.
Cell phone records showed Robinson was in the area of the shooting at the time of the attack, and that he left Chicago for Indiana and Michigan following the shooting.
Robinson, of the 8200 block of South Ingleside Avenue—two blocks south of Armstrong’s home—was arrested Thursday at his mother’s home in the 8600 of South Phillips Avenue