Black male Deon Alberto Nelson, age 21, was shot on the night of August 4, 2019, in Chicago's Austin neighborhood and died shortly afterward.
Around 10:13 p.m., he sat in a parked car at a gas station in the 5600 block of West Bloomingdale Avenue with a 21-year-old woman when two men walked up and opened fire, striking him multiple times; the woman was grazed in the arm and leg.
Deon was rushed to Stroger Hospital and pronounced dead about two hours later.
An autopsy found he died of multiple gunshot wounds.
The initial police account noted Area North detectives were investigating the ambush-style attack at the gas station.
Nearly a year later, on July 11, 2020, prosecutors charged two 20-year-old men, Romeo Langston and Jahuan Smith, with first-degree murder in the killing of Deon Alberto Nelson, age 21.
A judge denied bail for both. According to the charging narrative, Deon Alberto Nelson, age 21, and his girlfriend had planned to meet Langston that night near North Lockwood and West Wabansia avenues; Smith, known to the girlfriend from the past, approached during the meetup.
Feeling uneasy and believing they were being followed, the couple drove to a gas station at Central and Bloomingdale and then pulled away.
As Deon Alberto Nelson, age 21, stopped at a red light and began a Facebook Live stream, Langston and Smith allegedly ran up and fired into the car.
Gunfire was captured on the live stream and on nearby surveillance video; investigators recovered multiple shell casings, obtained cell-phone location records placing the suspects near the meetup spot, and found incriminating Facebook messages in the weeks after the shooting.
The woman later identified both suspects in photographs.
Contemporaneous reports identified the victim as Deon Alberto Nelson, age 21, and located the attack in the Austin community area on Chicago's West Side.
Subsequent summaries and memorials corroborate the date, August 4, 2019, the Austin-location details, and that Deon Alberto Nelson, age 21, died from gun violence in the wee hours of August 5, 2019, in Chicago.
Public reporting from the day after the shooting does not list arrests, but later coverage records the no-bail ruling after Langston and Smith were charged in July 2020.
Available sources do not show final disposition or convictions in the case; the most clearly documented status remains that both men were charged with first-degree murder and held without bail following the 2020 hearing.
