COOK COUNTY CRIMINAL COURTHOUSE — Days after he allegedly shot five people in what police called a landlord-tenant dispute, Jarvis Garrett stood before a Cook County judge charged only with possession of a firearm.
Garrett, 43, turned a .38 special blue steel revolver on the group when they showed up at his home in the 11300 block of South Forest Avenue Sunday night armed with a pipe, according to court records.
Garrett, who was in the process of having some or all of them evicted from the building, allegedly told police, "I was just defending myself; they came at me with a pipe."
According to police, two men, one 17 and the other 21, suffered a gunshot wounds to the shoulder, a 49-year-old woman was shot in the neck. A bullet hit a man, 40, in the arm, and a teenage boy suffered a graze wound to the leg.
Prosecutors opted to charge Garrett only with possession of a firearm.
At at bond hearing Thursday, attorney Michael Solock argued repeatedly that Garrett had been on his own land at the time of the incident and deserved a low bail amount.
"You want to carry a gun, these are the consequences," said Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr., noting that multiple children in Chicago have been shot in recent weeks by stray bullets, including two boys, ages 5 and 7, who were among 70 people wounded in gun violence over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
Bourgeois set Garrett's bond at $50,000.
