Cops: Joliet man shot after asking for cigarettes
BY BRIAN STANLEY bstanley@stmedianetwork.com October 23, 2012 5:44PM
Darrel Perkins
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Updated: November 25, 2012 11:50AM
JOLIET — An 18-year-old man was shot to death after barging into a 53-year-old man’s apartment to ask for smokes Monday night, authorities said.
Chief Mike Trafton said police were called at 9:44 p.m. after receiving a 911 call that a man had been shot in his head in the apartment complex at 1019 Lois Place.
They arrived to find Tevin L. Bridges at the base of the stairs on the first floor with a gunshot wound in his forehead and a BB gun near his body, Trafton said.
Will County Coroner Patrick K. O’Neil said an autopsy performed Tuesday determined Bridges died of multiple gunshot wounds.
Neighbors told police they heard arguing in an apartment before the shots, but Darrel Perkins reportedly said he heard two shots fired in the hallway and looked out to see Bridges near the stairs.
But police searched Perkins’ apartment and found packaged marijuana, $600, ammunition and other evidence that Bridges was shot in the apartment, Trafton said. No gun was found during the search.
Surveillance video from outside the complex showed one man leaving immediately after the shots were fired, police said.
Witnesses told police several people were in Perkins’ apartment watching Monday night’s Bears game when Bridges knocked and asked for two cigarettes, Trafton said. When he was told they would cost a dollar, he went into the apartment “with closed fists,” Trafton said.
That’s when Perkins took a .38-caliber handgun off the coffee table and fired at Bridges, police said.
Perkins was charged with murder, delivery of marijuana, unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon and unauthorized possession of ammunition.
