Date: Friday, August 16, 1985 Source: By Ann Marie Lipinski. 
Section: CHICAGOLAND   Copyright CHICAGO TRIBUNE 
TRIAL CREATES HERO, ENEMY IN ONE MAN

    Detective Reynaldo Guevara grew up on the gang turf of the city`s Near
West Side and for five years worked those same streets as a specialist in the
Chicago Police Department`s gang crimes unit. He knew the neighborhood gang
members and he knew their families.

    On Thursday, Guevara found himself a hero in the eyes of one of those
families and an enemy in the eyes of another for his role in investigating
the murder of a man known as Blue Eyes.

    ``I knew the families, I knew both kids,`` Guevara said as he stood
outside the courtroom of Criminal Court Judge James Bailey, recalling the
Jan. 1, 1984, slaying of Gilbert ``Blue Eyes`` Perez. Inside the courtroom,
Mario Flores was being tried in connection with the crime.

    ``I`d known the defendant since he helped organize a gang four years
ago,`` Guevara said. ``I`d locked the victim up many times. These weren`t
great kids, but I knew them.``

    When the jury, after deliberating for little more than an hour, returned
a guilty verdict against Flores, the family of the victim pronounced Guevara
a hero--the man who had worked 11 months to bring charges against their son`s
killer.

    The parents of Flores shook their heads and looked with pain upon
Guevara, a man who had worked 11 months to put their son behind bars.

    According to Guevara and prosecutors, in the early morning of Jan. 1,
Perez, who prosecutors said was drunk, struck a car near North and Western
Avenues. Perez, 21, got out of his auto and shouted a phrase that meant he
belonged to a certain gang faction.

    Flores, 20, with a friend who was driving by the accident scene, answered
Perez`s verbal signal, indicating that he belonged to the same gang faction.
Flores invited Perez to get into the car.

    ``They tricked him,`` said Assistant State`s Atty. William Merritt,
explaining that Perez believed Flores to be a member of a friendly gang. The
men said, `` `Come on, we`ll help you get out of here,` because he had just
been in an accident and was drunk as a skunk,`` Merritt said during closing
arguments.

    According to testimony, Flores and his friend then drove Perez several
blocks to an alley behind a factory. There, prosecutors say, Flores shot
Perez in the head, chest and stomach and, with his friend, ripped the gold
chains from Perez`s neck.

    Several days after the shooting, Guevara received an anonymous call from
a man saying that a woman who worked near the scene of the accident had seen
Flores invite Perez into his car.

    But when Guevara asked the woman to tell her story, she refused, saying
she feared for the lives of herself and her children.
    ``Every other day for 11 months I would talk to her,`` Guevara recalled.
``I would visit her at home. I would talk to her daughters. . . . I knew why
she was afraid.``

    On Nov. 9, the woman phoned as Guevara was in his office. She said she
had heard that her son, also a gang member, was being referred to on the
streets as Perez`s killer. `` `I am willing to talk,` she told me,`` Guevara
said.

    Mike Johnson, an attorney for Flores, told the jurors Thursday that
Flores` codefendant, 19-year-old Victor Flores (no relation), was Perez`s
assailant.

    Though many of them understood little of the English spoken in the trial,
family members of the victim and the defendant kept a vigil in Bailey`s
courtroom since the trial began Monday.

    On Wednesday, Flores` mother asked Anna Rodriguez, the victim`s mother,
to join her for coffee. The invitation was rejected.

    Said a friend who had come to court to translate for Mrs. Rodriguez, ``To
take coffee with them is to take coffee with the devil.`` She declined to
give her name, explaining that she, as has become custom in her West Side
neighborhood, is fearful of revenge.

    On Monday, Mario Flores is to appear for a death penalty hearing.

    ``I`ve been shot at and ambushed,`` Guevara said as he watched the
families leave the courtroom Thursday. ``This is the stuff that bothers me.``

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