On the night of November 19, 2023, in Chicago's Logan Square, a 72-year-old male, Ecuadorian-born grandfather named Cesar Antonio Patino left a family birthday celebration and began the short walk to his car along the 3900 block of West Fullerton Avenue.
Around 9:55–10 p.m., a white SUV rolled past; gunfire erupted, and the 72-year-old male was struck in the chest.
His wife, Rosa Gordillo, who had stepped back inside for their jackets, came out to find him on the sidewalk.
Medics rushed the 72-year-old male to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead later that evening.
The 72-year-old male, Ecuadorian by origin and long settled in Chicago, was retired from construction and known in his extended family as a gentle, steady presence.
Relatives described the Ecuadorian 72-year-old male as a patient patriarch who had made a life on the city's Northwest Side after growing up in Ecuador and living in Chicago for roughly four decades.
He maintained a home address in Albany Park and doted on his many grandchildren, the kind of elder who kept a large family stitched together with favors and phone calls.
Detectives from Chicago Police Area Five opened a homicide investigation that night.
Surveillance obtained by local reporters captured a white SUV creeping along Fullerton, then making a U-turn before speeding away, an image that fixed the 72-year-old male's final moments to a suspect vehicle but not yet to a named shooter.
Police canvassed the corridor for additional video and witnesses, working the case as a drive-by shooting with the Ecuadorian 72-year-old male as an unintended or targeted victim—still unclear.
In the days that followed, the Ecuadorian 72-year-old male's family gathered in grief near the scene and at home, recounting how ordinary and happy the evening had begun and how suddenly it had broken.
They stressed there was no sign of a robbery since nothing had been taken, no words exchanged that anyone heard, only the passing vehicle, the burst of shots, and then the frantic push to save him.
Through vigils and interviews, they continued to plead to the neighborhood and the city for information that could turn a blurred white SUV into a suspect, and a suspect into an arrest.
As of the latest reporting, no arrests have been announced, and authorities continue to seek leads on the white SUV and the unknown assailant,in the senseless killing of 72 year old, Ceasar Antonio Patino; Mowed down by a shower of bullets as he walked to his car, after a celebrating a birthday of a family member.
