Aug. 31--On the last day of his life, college freshman Alan Oliva mowed the yard at his parents' south suburban Oak Lawn home and kissed them goodbye before meeting his girlfriend at a Memorial Day weekend party.
The 19-year-old, who was studying to become a police officer at Moraine Valley Community College and working at UPS, playfully punched at his father's stomach when Alan Oliva Sr. told him to be careful.
Before walking out the door, he put on a red polo shirt -- a decision of seemingly small consequence but one that would cost him his life, according to Cook County prosecutors. Hours later, he was ambushed by gang members in Chicago's McKinley Park neighborhood who mistook him for a rival in enemy colors, beaten with a baseball bat and fatally stabbed.
One of the Satan Disciples then stole the cellphone Oliva's father bought him earlier that day for his birthday.
Authorities said Oliva had no gang involvement.
"He was the exact opposite of what they represented," said Oliva's mother, Rhonda, recalling that her son was about to start a second job to save up for a car. "He ... worked for everything he had."
Five years later in the Leighton Criminal Court Building, more than 20 of Oliva's friends and family members sat in front of the detectives who investigated the case as the first two of the four gang members charged in his slaying were convicted last week by separate juries of first-degree murder.
When the first verdict came in Thursday night, Rhonda Oliva's head dropped and she began crying, while her husband struggled to keep his composure.
One of the defendants, Gary Sams, 39, appeared to angrily look at his weeping family after the verdict was announced. Another jury convicted Pablo Colon, 25, of first-degree murder on Thursday as well.
The three-day trial provided yet another glimpse of life on violent sections of Chicago's streets, where wearing the wrong colors or crossing unseen boundaries can provoke threats, a beating or worse.
"This is not just tragic, this is so senseless it defies our reasoning," Assistant State's Attorney Daniel Reed told jurors in closing arguments. "When boys walk our streets ... anywhere in the city of Chicago ... they have a right to wear a red shirt and not be attacked for it. It's the same color the Bulls wear, the Blackhawks."
Oliva, who grew up in Chicago's West Lawn neighborhood before moving to Oak Lawn with his family, was unfamiliar with the McKinley Park neighborhood, where he met his girlfriend at a party that night in May 2010, according to trial testimony and his family.
As he and a friend walked to a gas station for cigarettes around 1 a.m., a Satan Disciples gang member spotted his red shirt, mistaking him for a member of the rival Latin Counts, whose colors are red and black, according to testimony. The man returned to a garage party and told other gang members he'd seen some "flakes" -- gang rivals -- in the neighborhood. At least six men, some carrying an aluminum baseball bat and a knife, left to confront them.
"Everybody's going crazy," a seemingly excited Colon later told police in a videotaped interview played for jurors at trial, bragging that he was the first one to confront the two teens.
Oliva and his friend had no opportunity to see the attack coming as they crossed 33rd Street on Ashland Avenue, prosecutors said. Oliva's friend testified that no one said a word before someone swung the bat at Oliva, a talented baseball player, knocking him to the sidewalk. Others then began to kick and punch him as he was pummeled with the bat.
The friend was struck by the bat, too, but he was able to stay on his feet and run away, he testified last week.
Prosecutors said they don't know who stabbed Oliva twice in the back.
Some passing drivers slowed and honked their horns, causing the attackers to run off, according to testimony. Oliva staggered to a nearby White Castle restaurant.
A worker mopping the floor testified that she didn't pay much attention as Oliva entered the restaurant and sat down at a table near the door, quietly looking straight ahead. Moments later, she went to the back to get the manager after Oliva slumped over onto the table. By the time they returned, he was on the floor bleeding. The worker lifted Oliva's shirt and saw that he had been stabbed.
Oliva died not long after his family arrived at Stroger Hospital.
"He wasn't awake," his mother tearfully testified last week. "He was on a machine."
Detectives worked the case for two years. Prosecutors allege that Daniel Guerrero, now 27, hit Oliva with the baseball bat, while Marco Ramirez, now 30, had Oliva's cellphone after the attack before burying it in a park near his house. Both are being held without bail while awaiting trial.
Not long after his son's killing, Alan Oliva Sr. got a tattoo of his son's Hubbard High School baseball jersey tattooed on his arm.
The jersey -- with the No. 3 -- is red.
For his son to be murdered over the color of his shirt is "shocking, disgusting, senseless," the elder Oliva said.
Said his wife: "It's just been a nightmare every single day."
sschmadeke@tribpub.com
