Gunman in mass shooting at Portage Park bar stood over daughter as she tended to her father and shot her in the head: source
Mercedes Imari , 24, Mario Pozuelos, 26, and Ricky Vera, 50.
Mariah Vera rushed to her father’s side as a gunman opened fire at her birthday party at a Portage Park bar over the weekend.
As she wept and tended to his wounds, the gunman walked up and shot her in the head, according to a law enforcement source.
Vera, 25, was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition, but her father Ricky Vera, 50, was pronounced dead at the scene outside his brother’s bar, Vera Lounge, in the 5500 block of West School Street early Sunday.
Two of Mariah Vera’s friends were also killed: Mercedes Imari, a 24-year-old mother of a young boy and infant twins; and Mario Pozuelos, 26, a “beloved son, brother, nephew, cousin,” according to a GoFundMe page.
Witnesses said the gunman fled in a dark-colored SUV. Police said a suspect was taken into custody the next day but no charges have been announced.
Police have said little more about the shooting, but a friend of the Vera family said an argument broke out around 2:30 a.m. Sunday and someone went to his car and grabbed a gun.
“Rick was celebrating his daughter Mariah’s birthday late Saturday night with other family and friends when an argument escalated,” the family friend, Luis E. Ortiz, said on a GoFundMe page for the Veras.
Another friend, Oscar Ortiz, said Rick Vera was an “excellent husband, excellent grandfather, excellent father, excellent brother.”
Imari “was a wonderful mother to our three precious babies — a 3 1/2-year-old boy and 9-month-old boy and girl twins,” Miguel Gordillo, the children’s father, said in a GoFundMe appeal.
“She put in long hours day and night to meet the needs of our growing family without once complaining,” Gordillo said. “She absolutely adored our babies and made our family the center of her life. She was especially excited to celebrate the holidays and was looking forward to gathering with our extended families and creating beautiful memories with our babies.”
Imari had a love for fashion and beauty” and intended to go to school and open her own business, he said. “We are devastated.”
Pozuelos’s family said it was “at a loss for words.”
“He was taken from us too soon due to a senseless act of gun violence,” the family said in its GoFundMe appeal. “Our Mario had his whole life ahead.”