Hector Salgado’s eyes were bloodshot as he left the courtroom, where the father of his grandchildren was ordered held on criminal charges after Salgado’s 6-year-old grandson shot and killed his 3-year-old brother while playing cops and robbers over the weekend.
“He’s OK,” Salgado said Sunday of the 6-year-old. “He doesn’t even remember. He doesn’t know nothing about it. He thinks his brother is in the hospital sick.”
Moments earlier, a judge ordered Michael Santiago, 25, held on $75,000 bail on child endangerment charges stemming from the shooting Saturday night in the family’s home in Humboldt Park.
The boys had been playing in the home in the 1000 block of North Francisco Avenue around 9 p.m. when the 6-year-old saw the handgun atop a refrigerator, took it and fired it in the direction of his brother, Eian Santiago, hitting him in the head, police said.
Santiago, a manager at a Papa Ray’s Pizza restaurant, was at work and his girlfriend, the victim’s mother, was with her 1-year-old child getting milk from a store. Hector Salgado was at the home and heard the gunshot, authorities said.
Michael Santiago told police he was a former member of the Spanish Cobras gang and that he had bought the gun from another gang member for protection after Santiago was a witness in a murder trial.
“The gun was purchased off the street. It was kept loaded, and it was wrapped in pajama pants on top of the refrigerator,” Assistant State’s Attorney Joseph DiBella said. “The defendant previously showed the 6-year-old where the gun was kept, and in a videotape statement the defendant said he kept the gun for protection because he was a former gang member who snitched on a gang member in a murder trial.
“About a week prior to the shooting, he showed his older son where he kept the gun. … (Santiago) took the gun from on top of the refrigerator, unwrapped the pajama pants and explained to the 6-year-old that the gun was only to be used by adults,” DiBella said.
DiBella said Santiago put the firearm back on top of the refrigerator. Court records show the gun was a .32-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. Authorities said Santiago does not have a firearm owner’s identification card or concealed carry license.
When DiBella asked Judge James Brown for a $1 million bail, Santiago’s relatives holding hands in the front row cried out, “Oh!”
Santiago’s public defender requested a lower bond, noting that Santiago wanted to be with his family after losing his son. She added that Santiago is the family’s primary source of income, working six days a week at Papa Ray’s.
“This is the ultimate tragedy,” Brown said. “And whether I said a $1 million bond or a lower bond, it’s not going to bring back this child. … I’m sure the defendant did not intend for this to happen, but it happened.
“And it’s what happens when people have guns who shouldn’t have guns,” the judge said. “That’s why we’ve had 2,300 people shot in Chicago so far this year.”
Brown set bail at $75,000. Santiago was expected to return to court Friday.
The boys’ mother, writing on Facebook, described the father as a “great man (and) father” who wanted to protect his family.
She said her family lives “in a terrible neighborhood” and cannot “even go outside without some (shooting).”
“It was an accident please no one wanted this to happen,” the mother added.
She asked people to stop posting “rude comments” about the incident, saying they “have no right to … judge us. For God sake we lost a child.”
“My beautiful baby boy,” she added in another post. “Oh my sweet baby boy … My Eian, my (baby), my Tarzan.”
Friends of the family have started a GoFundMe site to help cover the costs of Eian’s funeral and other expenses.
The site is asking for $10,000 and, as of late Monday morning, had raised more than $2,000.
“Confused why god chose such a young innocent kid,” wrote a family friend, George Rayyan, who helped start the website. “Tonight is a night that will haunt us for the rest of our life.
“We are asking for your help to have a proper funeral service and am asking for you to keep this family in your prayers,” he added. “Every dollar will go to the family for funeral expenses and other needs the family might have.”
