It was a long, violent road to alley in St. Paul

Tony Kennedy, Star Tribune

CHICAGO -- Harry Jerome Evans, the Chicago native charged in last week's slaying of an undercover St. Paul police officer, was involved since his teenage years in drugs, theft, robbery and bursts of violence that included beating a man with a steel pipe and punching a teacher in the face.

Antonio Alexander Kelly, who is being held as a material witness to Friday's fatal shooting of Sgt. Gerald Vick, also has an extensive criminal record in Chicago. Kelly's record includes violence against women, stolen cars and possession of crack cocaine.

The records describe frequent run-ins that Evans and Kelly had separately with police patrolmen on the streets of Chicago before they moved to St. Paul several years ago.

Evans, 32, was charged Monday with murdering Vick in an alley near Erick's Bar on St. Paul's East Side. Kelly, 27, helped investigators find the gun that he said Evans used to kill Vick after an argument outside the bar.

At Chicago's Daley Center, a Cook County courthouse, more than 20 criminal cases are on file against the two men combined. The most serious case is an attempted murder conviction that sent Evans to prison in Illinois for several years starting in 1991, when he was 18 years old.

In that case, Evans pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder and attempted armed robbery for striking a man "about the head and face with a steel pipe during a robbery attempt," documents said. The Dec. 11, 1990, attack against Miguel M. Padilla occurred about noon on a street in K-Town, the West Side of Chicago neighborhood where Evans lived.

The complaint signed by the victim said Evans beat him with the pipe, then went through his pockets looking for money. Reports on file don't elaborate on the incident, but Evans' cousin, Michelle Greene, told the Star Tribune that she thought the victim was a pizza delivery man or the driver of an ice cream truck. The victim's injuries were not detailed in court records.

Greene said Evans was with a group of others when he was arrested. Documents in the case indicate that at least one other person -- an unnamed juvenile male -- was arrested with Evans.

In the 11 months leading up to Evans' assault against Padilla, Evans was arrested three times by Chicago police. His first arrest on file was Feb. 13, 1990, when he punched a classroom teacher in the face.

Evans' family members said he dropped out of Orr High School without graduating. His assault against the teacher came at Westinghouse High School, also on the West Side of Chicago. The arrest report said Evans turned violent when the teacher tried to remove him from a classroom that he had entered without authorization. He was charged with battery.

In August 1990, Evans was charged with disorderly conduct for fleeing from police during a drug surveillance sweep in his neighborhood. He was caught after a brief foot chase.

Then, in October 1990, Evans stole a shoeshine box and brushes from a downtown Chicago shoeshine attendant. The report said the equipment was valued at less than $300, and Evans was charged with theft.

After Evans was released from prison for the attempted murder of Padilla, he was caught with 16 Ziploc bags of crack cocaine in October 1993, according to records. One month later, while police were on a routine patrol "in a high narcotics area" in K-Town, they observed Evans carrying a black, .32-caliber pistol with three live rounds.

The gun was not registered, and Evans later pleaded guilty to two counts of weapons possession by a felon. According to court records, he was sent back to prison on a two-year sentence. Greene said her cousin moved to the Twin Cities in the late 1990s after getting out of prison and living with family in K-Town for an extended time.

Kelly's past

Like Evans, Kelly started getting into trouble on the streets of Chicago when he was a teenager. He was arrested more often than Evans, but Evans' offenses were more serious.

Antonio (Oil) Kelly lived on Chicago's South Side. At 16, he was arrested during a "gang suppression mission" by the Chicago Police Department in October 1993. According to documents, the officers spotted Kelly in a black 1980 Buick Regal wanted in connection with a robbery. The steering column of the car was "peeled" with a screwdriver, and Kelly told officers he had taken the vehicle. He was charged with criminal trespass to a vehicle.

Over the next six years, Kelly was arrested three times for stealing cars, leading to a four-year prison stint given to him by a judge in 1999.

Kelly was twice arrested in Chicago for possession of narcotics, once in 1995 and again in 1999.

The July 1999 drug arrest was for crack cocaine, and it occurred in a vacant public housing unit where Kelly was trespassing.

Misdemeanor assault charges were filed four times against Kelly from November 1993 to December 1996. Victims in two of the cases were female. A 14-year-old girl told police that Kelly grabbed her around the neck on Oct. 16, 1994. The next day, a 27-year-old woman signed a complaint against Kelly for allegedly harassing her and grabbing her by the shirt collar, according to records.

In two altercations with men, one of Kelly's victims lost a tooth and another suffered a cut on the back of his head, according to arrest reports.

The most recent criminal charge on file in Chicago against Kelly is for an outburst against patrol officers on a South Side street. The complaint said Kelly cursed the officers many times with demeaning obscenities and then spat at them.

The police report said Kelly, who was 23 years old at the time, was intoxicated during the altercation. He was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

In the moments before Sgt. Vick was shot to death in St. Paul, it was Kelly who started a verbal confrontation while standing in front of a vehicle driven by Vick's undercover partner, Sgt. Joseph Strong, according to the murder complaint against Evans.


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