Man awaiting trial on 160 counts of murder got shot inside a stolen car with two guns — while on electronic monitoring
CWB Chicago | 02/07/2024 | Tim Hecke
CHICAGO — A man on electronic monitoring while awaiting trial on murder and carjacking charges was shot while driving a stolen car with firearms inside the vehicle, officials said Wednesday.
Incredibly, this is the second time that Torrey Lewis has been accused of possessing firearms while on electronic monitoring for the same 2017 murder and carjacking case. The previous gun charges, which we told you about in April 2022, ended with a judge finding him not guilty during a bench trial.
Lewis is facing more than 160 counts of murder in the still-pending murder case in which a disabled man was shot to death while sitting in his wheelchair outside a suburban movie theater as his girlfriend looked on.
New allegations
Around 10 a.m. on January 31, Lewis was enjoying his “free movement day” — one of two days each week that people on electronic monitoring (EM) in Illinois are allowed to be out of the house under a 2022 law that some people consider “criminal justice reform.” Legislators who supported the measure said it was necessary so people on EM could do “essential activities” like going to a doctor or getting food.
Lewis’s “essential activities” that day had him sitting behind the wheel of a stolen car in the parking lot of an auto parts store in Dolton, officials said Wednesday. He was shot multiple times as he sat in the vehicle. A rifle and a handgun were found in the front passenger area, according to the Cook County sheriff’s office.
A man in the back seat of the stolen car was also shot, as were two men outside the vehicle. The sheriff’s office said police determined that someone in the stolen car exchanged gunfire with the occupants of another vehicle.
Officials cannot monitor EM participants on their “free movement days” because there are no restrictions on where they can go as long as they stay in Cook County, according to the sheriff’s office.
But the sheriff’s office reviewed Lewis’ ankle monitor GPS history to see what he was up to on the morning he got shot. They said he left his house at 8:48 a.m. and “proceeded to travel at high rates of speed throughout the South Suburbs, at times reaching speeds of over 100 miles an hour, until he arrived at the scene of the shooting.”
J6 protestors didn’t get a “free movement day,” did they?
Lewis is awaiting trial on allegations that he and another man robbed and fatally shot Timothy Horace outside a movie theater in Country Club Hills in July 2017. Prosecutors said the killers stole the victim’s Rolex watch and then tried to drive away with his car, but they couldn’t operate the vehicle because it was equipped for use by disabled drivers, the Chicago Tribune reported in 2018.
A grand jury returned a true bill that charged Lewis with 160 counts of murder, nine counts of armed robbery, and 16 counts of attempted vehicular hijacking in the case, and Lewis was initially held without bail.
