COOK COUNTY CRIMINAL COURTHOUSE — A man picked up for questioning last summer in the drive-by murder of a Loop sandwich shop worker was ordered held on $1.5 million bond Wednesday after getting charged this week with murder.
But Arcadio Davila's attorney questioned the timing of the charges, suggesting police are using weak evidence to close out old cases in response to the increased pressure surrounding Chicago's violence.
"The defendant was picked up and questioned in August ... but no one identified him then," said Cook County Public Defender Marijane Placek, citing Davila's account of the interrogation.
"Now all of a sudden we have a supposed witness identification."
Davila, 24, of the 5100 N. Lovejoy Ave., was charged Tuesday with Ricky Pike's murder.
The Cook County State's Attorney's Office declined to comment on Placek's allegation.
In court, prosecutors said Davila pulled alongside Pike's car on Aug. 3, said "what's up" and then started shooting.
Pike, also 24, died in the shooting in the 2100 block of North St. Louis Avenue.
Pike was a Cordon Bleu cooking school graduate and was working at Goodwin's, a popular sandwich shop on Franklin Street in the Loop.
He and a friend were in Pike's Geo Prizm, headed to Pike's home, with a car full of friends following behind.
Davila allegedly "pulled up beside the victim's car ... said 'what's up' to the victims and fired six to 10 shots," Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Melissa Samp said.
Multiple bullets hit Pike. His companion "ducked down" and was shot in the hand, Samp said.
But before he ducked, the friend got a good look at Davila, whom he recognized from school. He later identified him in a lineup, prosecutors said.
For Pike's family, the arrest, however delayed, came as a relief.
Reached by phone Wednesday night, Pike's father, Steve, a resident of Edgewater, said he wasn't ready to come to court and look his son's alleged killer in the eye.
"I didn't want to look at the guy," he said. "I know I'll see plenty of him as the trial comes up."
Steve Pike struggled to describe the way he felt.
"You look for the right words to say; I don't know if I'm glad, happy," he said. "It is good that (Davila) is off the streets, better than if he were still out there."
Earlier Wednesday, Siu Moy, the mother of another slain DePaul student, Frankie Valencia, who was gunned down in 2009, talked about her son and Pike, who were friends.
"Ricky and Frankie were very close friends," said Moy, who played on a softball team with the two young men. "We lit another candle at our house last night."
Since the killings, the Pike family and the Valencia family have become close. When Maria Pike Davis, found out Tuesday night that charges had been filed against her son's alleged killer, one of the first calls she made was to Moy.
"I went screaming around the house," said Moy, who was playing cards with Frankie's brother when the phone rang.
