Cops: ‘Hood CNN’ reporter’s murder solved but no prosecution

CHICAGO (AP) — The 2018 killing of “ZackTV," a trailblazer in a perilous genre of gangland reporting he called "‘hood CNN,” seemed destined to go unsolved, even though gunmen attacked him on a downtown Chicago street lined with surveillance cameras.

Police never announced arrests in the shooting of Zachary Stoner, who drew a national YouTube following filling a media niche with up-close stories about the lives and deaths of gang members and affiliated rappers from places other reporters were afraid to go.

But police records obtained by The Associated Press reveal investigators believe they solved his homicide years ago when they arrested members of South Side Chicago's “Perry Avenue” gang. But prosecutors in 2019 declined to prosecute and police were forced to release the suspects.

Police say the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office cited the possibility that the two sides in the shooting on May 30, 2018, were “mutual combatants” — a disputed legal concept that’s a throwback to duels between nobles or prearranged gunfights in the Wild West.

That prosecutors passed on charges on those grounds raises questions about whether Chicago gangs can literally get away with murder when it’s unclear who initiated a shooting and who returned fire in self-defense.

The case and arrest reports, obtained in an open-records request, offer previously unreported details about what may have precipitated Stoner's killing after he left the crowded Clark Street Refuge bar. Relying on video, eyewitnesses, cellphone location data and ballistics on a bullet removed from the 30-year-old's brain, police arrested five suspects, age 19 to 22, in 2018 and 2019, on probable cause of first-degree murder.

Prosecutors also cited “inconsistent witnesses” as a reason to not prosecute. Two of the...