Shaughnessy Simms / Photo from Chicago Police
BY JON SEIDEL
Chicago Sun-Times
An Austin neighborhood man has been charged with first-degree murder after prosecutors said he shot and killed the father of his girlfriend’s child.
Shaughnessy Simms Jr., 31, of the 5900 block of West Midway Park, was ordered held without bail Sunday by Cook County Judge James Brown.
Assistant State’s Attorney Kingsley Sawyers said Simms and his girlfriend began to argue Friday at Simms’ home because he’d been dating other women. The argument went on for a couple of hours, Sawyers said.
Eventually he said the girlfriend went to her room and got on the phone, speaking to Jermane Richardson, the father of her 7-year-old child.
Richardson showed up at the residence 45 minutes later and knocked on the door, the prosecutor said. Simm’s girlfriend came out of her room to speak to Richardson, who was at the bottom of a set of stairs.
A witness later saw Simms come out of his room with a “big gun,” Sawyers said, and he began to argue with Richardson as the girlfriend tried to intervene.
Eventually Richardson began to walk up the stairs toward Simms, Sawyers said, but Simms shot him once in the arm. Then, after Richardson fell to the ground in a seated position, the prosecutor said Simms stood over him and shot him two more times, once in the head.
Simms was arrested in Downstate Freeport, police said, and admitted to shooting Richardson.