On September 26, 2020, in Chicago's Austin neighborhood, African American male Avion Aldridge, age 17, was gunned down late that morning in the 200 block of North Leamington Avenue.
Witness accounts and police reports describe two assailants approaching the teenager near a vacant lot around 11:15 a.m. and opening fire; he was struck multiple times and died at the scene, the fatal injury to his upper torso.
In the days that followed, his name appeared on community memorials and homicide
rolls as another young life lost to gunfire on the West Side.
Detectives pieced together surveillance video and witness statements that suggested the shooting was an act of mistaken identity in a simmering gang conflict.
Prosecutors later said the group believed they had spotted a rival before two gunmen closed in on Avion; footage captured what happened leading up to and after the killing.
The first major break came months later: in January 2021, authorities charged a 19-year-old Lawndale man, Davion Jones, as the alleged getaway driver, and a judge set his bail at $3 million. At that point, the shooter himself had not yet been charged.
Further arrests followed. In early March 2021, police announced that a teenager had been taken into custody and identified as the shooter; later that same day, prosecutors named Hakeim Stone, 17 at the time of the killing, then 18, as the person who fired the shots that killed Avion, and charged him as an adult with first-degree murder.
A judge ordered Stone held without bail while the case proceeded, and court records showed him due back in court later that month.
News reports from that period framed the motive as a fatal misidentification of a rival gang member. Publicly available sources reviewed do not show subsequent adjudication details for either defendant.
