Jury convicts man in 2018 slaying of Northwestern PhD student in Rogers Park: ‘The law doesn’t allow a shooter to be a bad shot’

Sitting on the hallway floor outside a Cook County courtroom Thursday, Vicente Colores-Chalmers pulled up a September 2018 video of his fiance, Shane Colombo.

Colombo, 25, had just walked into a condo the couple had purchased in Evanston for the first time, and sent Colores-Chalmers a video of himself there, laughing and saying hello. About two hours after he sent the video to Colores-Chalmers, Colombo, an incoming doctoral student at Northwestern University, was shot to death near Clark Street and Howard Avenue in Rogers Park.

On Thursday night, a jury found Diante Speed, now 26, guilty of first-degree murder after about four hours of deliberation. Inside the courtroom at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, Colombo’s mother, Tonya Colombo, gasped as the verdict was read. Speed’s mother and grandmother, on the other side of the courtroom, remained quiet.

Shortly after court was dismissed, Tonya Colombo, 58, grinned. It had been an anxious six years of waiting and “wanting justice, wanting to give him peace,” she said. “Now I feel we can finally do that.”

Waiting for the trial was stressful for both parents. Shane Colombo’s father, Ernesto, brought a tattered file of paperwork to each day of the court proceedings. The file contained everything from his son’s birth and death certificates to his social security card and notes from conversations he’s had with detectives. He has poured much of his grief into the intricacies of the legal process and Speed’s criminal history, even though he knew it would not undo the events of six years ago.

“Nothing’s going to bring him back,” Ernesto Colombo said. “(But) we’re at the part where we seek justice.”

During closing arguments Thursday, prosecutors said justice meant nothing less than a first-degree murder conviction. Whether Speed had aimed at Shane Colombo or at anyone else, Assistant State’s Attorney James Papa said, “the law doesn’t allow a shooter to be a bad shot.”

“(Speed) turned Howard and Clark Street into his own private target range,” Assistant State’s Attorney Kim Ward said. “He was a menace and a threat to everyone out there and the person who paid the price was Shane Colombo.”

Speed’s defense attorneys focused on the argument that Speed had been shooting in self-defense, after a man in a white tank top who Speed said was threatening him and his friends.

Surveillance video showed Colombo collapsing to the sidewalk but didn’t capture anyone firing a weapon. Assistant Public Defender Sarah Fransene said there wasn’t footage of Speed’s alleged intended target making the threats that they argued put Speed in fear of his safety.

“Just because the video didn’t pick up every single angle of what occurred at Clark and Howard that night doesn’t mean (something) didn’t happen,” Fransene said.

Defense lawyers also sought to cast suspicion on how Chicago police processed the scene of the shooting and accused the investigating detective of lying to Speed about how much of the shooting was captured on video. They acknowledged that the case was tragic and high-profile and suggested to the jury that police felt pressure to make progress on the case.

While prosecutors zeroed in on Speed’s words in a call to his mother where he said “I was shooting and I hit an innocent; I hit a white dude and he’s dead,” Speed’s attorneys instead focused on the account he gave his mother in the same phone call; claiming a man in a tank top threatened him.

Colombo’s death was “a senseless, awful, horrible tragedy,” Fransene said. “But you can’t let sympathy or any other prejudice influence your judgment on this case.”

As he sat and waited for the verdict Thursday afternoon, Colores-Chalmers sorted through pictures of Colombo on his phone. Colombo was always moving, he said. He always had a skateboard. He was always running late, often because he wanted to be “everywhere all at once.”

Though Colores-Chalmers said he knew instantly that he wanted to marry Colombo when they met at a fraternity event, the pair got engaged in 2017. Colombo wanted to play the James Blake song “Retrograde” at their wedding. Colores-Chalmers has gotten married, but he still can’t listen to the reams of playlists Colombo made for him throughout their relationship.

He lived in Evanston, in the condo he’d bought to share with Colombo, for three years. For the first few months, Colores-Chalmers brought flowers every day to the site where he was killed. He took public transit down the same streets that prosecutors and defense attorneys referenced throughout the trial. He left Chicago and has studied to become a death doula, focused on supporting dying people and their loved ones.

“The expression when you see someone (deceased) and have to identify them is awful,” he said. “I don’t want to live in a world where people get to leave it and their last experience is a terrible one. Wouldn’t you want to be helped and given dignity and respect and love?”

He hopes to work in hospital settings, but also in prisons and jails, where he is certain to encounter people convicted of crimes like the one that killed Colombo.

Colores-Chalmers said before the jury returned that he wanted to see the case resolved, but expressed sympathy for socioeconomic pressures that can land people in the criminal justice system.

“I feel bad that he wasn’t supported and he didn’t have an outlet to transform his life,” said Colores-Chalmers, 34, who wore Colombo’s engagement ring on a chain around his neck. “I hope that he lives a better life after this. Maybe he will be taken care of.”

Speed is set to be sentenced on Dec 3.