Chicago police did not document any steps taken for several months during their investigation into a deadly hit-and-run, according to records obtained as the result of a lawsuit brought by NBC 5 Investigates. Those reports also show activity in the case picked up just nine days after an NBC 5 report that highlighted the lack of an arrest.
Selina Taylor and her family were driving home from a Juneteenth celebration in 2021 when a speeding Chevy Malibu ran the red at Pershing and State, hitting her vehicle.
Taylor and her 3-month-old son Sebastian Junior were killed. Taylor’s partner Sebastian Taylor and their then-12-year-old son David were severely injured.
The driver of the Malibu and a passenger fled on foot, leaving the car behind.
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“These last two-and-a-half years for me have honestly been terrible,” Selina Taylor’s sister Keyona Armstrong said. “It’s taken a toll on my mental health. Sometimes I can’t – I just don’t really sleep at night because of this.”
“I’m always thinking about my sister,” she added.
Both Armstrong and Sebastian Taylor said they got no information from Chicago police – leaving them in the dark about what happened that night.
“I didn’t find out anything from police,” Armstrong said.
NBC 5 Investigates filed more than a dozen open records requests with various agencies on this case. As the months dragged on without an arrest, one of those requests was for all Chicago police reports, to see what steps they were taking – if any – to find the driver.
That request was denied, so NBC 5 Investigates filed a lawsuit, alleging CPD violated the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.
“Unfortunately, this is not an unusual occurrence,” said attorney Matt Topic, who represents NBC 5 in this and several other lawsuits over FOIA violations. “The Chicago Police Department has a very bad track record of being transparent with the public and even the families of victims of crimes about what’s going on in these cases."
“The law is structured in a way that public bodies are required to be transparent,” Topic added. “It shouldn’t require lawsuits to turn over records.”
“There’s a great number of people who’ve lost loved ones, lost children, lost parents, and I think they ought to know a lot more about why the police department can’t seem to clear these cases,” Topic said. “And part of the way to get to that, if they won’t answer your questions, is to demand records from them and that takes lawsuits.”
Of the roughly 37,000 hit-and-run crashes the city saw in 2021, Chicago police made arrests in just 95 cases, according to city data obtained and analyzed by NBC 5 Investigates. This case ultimately was a rare hit-and-run where Chicago police did find a suspect: Tevin Gray, who was indicted on two counts of reckless homicide and four counts of leaving the scene of an accident in December 2022. He has pleaded not guilty.
The indictment came nearly 18 months after the crash. But the nearly 500 pages of reports obtained by NBC 5 Investigates show CPD had several clues pointing to Gray far earlier than that, and let months go by without documenting any steps taken to solve the crime.
The crash report filled out the night of the incident lists a registered owner of the Malibu. Court records show that owner is the same woman Gray was accused of attempting to strangle in a 2018 domestic battery charge.
Six days after the crash, records show CPD searched the Malibu and found a debit card with Gray’s name on it inside the car, as well as bags of cocaine and fentanyl.
After that, the file shows no activity for more than three months. It wasn’t until October 2021 that CPD documented the next update: CPD received a DNA report identifying Gray as a match to DNA found on the steering wheel airbag of the Malibu. Investigators then requested additional testing on a gun found in the car.
Then, nothing. No updates in the file for another five months.
Meanwhile, as CPD’s investigation seemingly stalled, records show Gray was arrested in November 2021 by Rockford police on unrelated weapon and drug charges – booked in the Winnebago County Jail, where he remains today.
Still, for months, there’s no evidence in the case file that Chicago police even knew he was in custody – and no documents showing they took any steps to find him.
In March 2022, NBC 5 Investigates aired a story revealing Illinois State Police were pursuing the Malibu just before the crash – and noted the lack of an arrest.
Just nine days after that report aired, records show CPD picked up the case again for the first time in more than five months. Investigators contacted ISP and met with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office. Then – more than nine months after the crash – they began to search social media for Gray, even though they found his debit card in the first week, and got a DNA match six months earlier.
“I don’t want my sister to be swept under no rug,” Armstrong said. “I want people to feel like, if that happens to them, ya’ll want somebody to say something too.”
Armstrong said she also asked police for years to see video of the crash captured by the surveillance camera of the Dawson Technical Institute at that intersection. NBC 5 Investigates filed an open records request for the footage with City Colleges, and when that was denied, filed another lawsuit to ultimately obtain it.
The video shows an ISP SUV arriving at the scene just 41 seconds after the crash.
ISP’s internal investigation cleared its troopers of any wrongdoing, saying the pursuit that reached speeds of more than 100 miles per hour was not a pursuit at all, in part because they did not activate their lights and sirens.
But after watching the video for the first time, Keyona disputed ISP’s version of events.
“I see why they don’t want me to see it,” she said. “It don’t take a rocket scientist to find out you pulled up right after this man hit my sister. You was behind him, he just was driving faster than you.”
Gray has pleaded not guilty to both the charges in connection with the crash, as well as the charges in Winnebago County, where he remains in jail on a $1 million bond.
Armstrong said, as her family continues to grieve, the lack of response from both CPD and ISP feels like a lack of accountability.
“That’s a whole human being,” she said. “What if that was your family? What if that was your baby?”
NBC 5 Investigates asked Chicago police about the gaps in time in their investigation. A CPD spokesman did not respond.
