A Venezuelan migrant has been formally charged with multiple felonies in connection to a violent kidnapping and double homicide that left two women dead and a third seriously wounded after an execution-style shooting in a South Side alley earlier this year.
Gabriel Edison Romero, 29, faces two counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted first-degree murder, three counts of aggravated armed kidnapping, and three counts of aggravated unlawful restraint. The charges stem from a January 27 incident that began on Chicago’s West Side and ended hours later in the 7700 block of South Oglesby.
Prosecutors say Romero, along with co-defendant Ricardo Gonzalez Leon, 31—also a Venezuelan national—abducted three women at gunpoint. One of the victims, 37-year-old Orlana Rodriguez, was Romero’s ex-girlfriend. All three victims were fellow Venezuelan migrants who had recently arrived in Chicago and were living in shelters.
According to a detention proffer from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, Rodriguez joined the two other women—identified as Yeris Castillo, 40, and a 31-year-old surviving victim—for a birthday celebration on the evening of January 27. While walking near a local store, they were approached by Romero and Gonzalez in a red Toyota Camry and ultimately forced into the vehicle at gunpoint.
Surveillance footage later showed the car arriving at a third-floor apartment in the 3300 block of West Van Buren Street, where a party was underway. Prosecutors allege the women were locked in a bedroom while armed men came in intermittently, threatening to kill them.
Around 4 a.m., all three victims were forced back into the Camry. Another vehicle, a red Jeep, followed as the group drove around the city for nearly 40 minutes. In an alley on South Oglesby, Romero allegedly dragged the surviving victim from the car and shot her multiple times. Two other men reportedly executed Rodriguez and Castillo.
The surviving woman—shot in the neck, chest, cheek, and hand—escaped and flagged down help. Police responding to the scene discovered the bodies of the other two victims nearby.
Investigators later identified the vehicles and traced Romero, who had fled Chicago. He was arrested in February in South Carolina and extradited to Cook County, where he remains in custody. Prosecutors say he was wearing the same hat at the time of arrest as he had on the night of the murders, visible in surveillance footage.
The U.S. Marshals Service arrested Gonzalez in March in Georgia. Authorities have identified him as a high-ranking member of Tren de Aragua, a violent Venezuelan street gang with transnational ties. Both men remain in custody pending trial.
