Oct. 27--A veteran Cook County judge shook his head Monday as a video played in his courtroom of a mother talking about the murder of her 6-year-old daughter.
Aliyah Shell had been fatally shot as she sat in her mother's lap on the front porch of their home in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood on a warm spring day in March 2012. They were waiting for a ride to a birthday party. The mother, Diana Aguilar, was running her fingers through her daughter's hair when two reputed Latin King gang members pulled up in a stolen gray pickup.
While Juan Barraza waited in the driver's seat, Luis Hernandez stepped into the street, shouted a gang slogan and opened fire on the home, where a rival Two-Six gang member lived. The only one shot was the sociable little girl sometimes known as "Care Bear."
"Who ends up getting killed? A little kid," Judge Stanley Sacks said at the Leighton Criminal Court Building. "No one can really imagine the mother's feelings. She's braiding her daughter's hair.
"Judges aren't supposed to be emotional. It's hard to do that in cases like this," the judge said. "But you can't let emotions guide you."
The judge then sentenced Hernandez, now 20, to 65 years in prison, and Barraza, now 21, to 50 years behind bars.
"These two showed a callous indifference to human life," Sacks said. "These Two-Sixers are right down the street here and the Latin Kings are as well. Two-Six, Latin King. ... It's all a bunch of BS, a bunch of nonsense, and now one little kid is dead and two young men are going to prison for a long time."
Aliyah's family members, all dressed in purple shirts, her favorite color, cried and embraced after the sentences were handed down.
Prosecutors had sought the maximum punishment -- life in prison for Hernandez and 75 years in prison for Barraza.
"They didn't care who was on that porch," Assistant State's Attorney William Kelly told the judge. "They were so wrapped up in this thing between the Latin Kings and the Two-Six ... they didn't show mercy, your honor, to anyone on that porch."
One of Barraza's cousins testified that Barraza was shuffled between aunts' homes growing up and kept out of high school after his mother apparently never filed the proper paperwork.
"If he was put in a different environment, he could've been successful," testified the cousin, Jacqueline Herrera.
His mother, Patricia Arcos, tearfully begged the judge in Spanish to show mercy on her son.
Barraza's lawyer, Dean Morask, said Barraza had cut his wrists while locked up in Cook County Jail.
Hernandez's mother, Magdelena Arroyo, testified in Spanish that her son was one of six children she raised alone and that he had never known his father, who returned to Mexico and started another family.
The documentary video played in court -- called "For the Love of Mom" -- is now shown in high schools in an attempt to prevent gang violence.
Aliyah's family cried as her mother held back tears as she lamented to the judge that she can't see her daughter anymore, only a cold tombstone.
She called her daughter's killers "selfish and monsters."
Aliyah's cousin, Yalitza Vaca, now 8, also submitted a statement to the judge.
"I miss her so much, and I wish this didn't happen to her," she wrote. "They took my best friend away from me. It hurts me a lot that she left me so early; we had a lot of stuff we were supposed to do together when we grew up."
sschmadeke@tribpub.com
