White male Charles Matthew Akers, age 25, was at The Fade Inn in Chicago's Portage Park neighborhood on the evening of March 19, 2010, when a gunman walked straight into the crowded barbershop and shot him at close range.
Witnesses described a full house just after 8 p.m., including families and children, and said the assailant appeared to know exactly whom he was targeting.
An off-duty Cook County corrections officer seated a few feet away chased the fleeing shooter into the night but
could not catch him.
Akers' girlfriend, Neyda Ramos, told reporters he had been trying to turn his life around for his 6-year-old son, even as police acknowledged he had past gang ties; investigators did not yet know what precipitated the attack.
According to contemporaneous reports, the shooting happened around 8:20 p.m. in the 5600 block of West Irving Park Road, and the 25-year-old was rushed from the shop to the Stein Institute, where he was pronounced dead at 11:15 p.m. Friday.
The initial police account characterized the killing as brazen and deliberate: a gunman entering a neighborhood barbershop Akers visited monthly, approaching him as he sat in the chair, and firing multiple rounds before escaping.
In the immediate aftermath, Chicago police said they had no one in custody and released no description that led to an arrest.
Subsequent local coverage has not documented any charges in the case, and early stories from that weekend emphasized detectives' appeals for information as they worked to determine a motive and identify a suspect.
