CHICAGO (AP) - The Latest on the sentencing of a convicted hit man of a notorious Chicago street gang (all times local):
12:40 p.m.
A federal judge has sentenced a hit man with a Chicago street gang to life in prison in one of the city’s largest gang cases in years.
U.S. District Judge John Tharp sentenced 37-year-old Paris Poe on Friday. The judge noted that Poe killed two government witnesses planning to testify against his gang, the Hobos.
Tharp said the killings were meant to send a message to other potential witnesses. He says the intimidation worked. One witness at Poe’s conspiracy trial and five other gang members said they’d rather go to jail than testify against the gang.
The judge says anyone Poe holds a grudge against should never have to worry he’ll come after them.
Tharp says Poe could still pose a threat decades from now and called him “undeterrable.”
When asked if he’d be making a statement at the sentencing, Poe stood and said: “I will not, sir.”
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12:10 a.m.
The convicted hit man of the notorious Hobos street gang is next up for sentencing in one of Chicago’s biggest gang cases in years.
Paris Poe goes before a Chicago federal judge Friday, a day after Hobos leader Gregory “Bowlegs” Chester was sentenced to a 40-year prison term.
Jurors found Poe carried out the most chilling of multiple Hobos murders. He fatally shot government witness Keith Daniels in 2013 as Daniels’ small stepchildren screamed nearby.
The 37-year-old Poe faces a mandatory life sentence on one count, for murder in aid of racketeering. But prosecutors also want life on two other counts, and want the life sentences to run consecutively. They say that’ll ensure Poe stays in prison, even on the off chance some count is tossed on appeal.
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