Dramatic testimony in Hobos gang trial as eyewitness recounts killing
Jason MeisnerContact Reporter
Chicago Tribune

Antonina Pellegrino and her boyfriend were walking to her car on the South Side one night a decade ago when two men in hoodies ran at them from an alley and pushed him up against a wrought iron fence.

While one man held Steven Bogovich's arm behind his back, another stuck a gun in his face and said, "'Where the (expletive) is the money?'" Pellegrino testified in a hushed federal courtroom Monday.

She pleaded with the gunman to let Bogovich go, but instead he fired a shot into his neck, pointed the gun at her and then took off, she said.

Panicked, Pellegrino ran to Bogovich and tried to apply pressure to his wound, but it was too late.

"He was just bleeding out and I was screaming for help, but no one would come and help," said Pellegrino, now 35, pausing to wipe tears from her eyes with her sleeve. Bogovich died the next day.

Pellegrino's dramatic testimony came as the trial of six reputed leaders of the Hobos gang entered its second month. Her boyfriend's November 2006 shooting, which prosecutors said stemmed from a drug deal gone bad, was one of nine killings allegedly carried out by the gang as part of a reign of terror that used violence and intimidation to seize control of the city's drug trade.

Pellegrino stood up from the witness stand to get a better look at defendant Gabriel Bush before pointing him out as her boyfriend's killer.

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Bush and the five others on trial — Gregory Chester, Paris Poe, Arnold Council, Derrick Vaughn and William Ford — face up to life in prison if convicted of the most serious counts of racketeering conspiracy.

Prosecutors allege that the Hobos represented a new breed of gang that was made up of members from various gangs who once were rivals. Many of the Hobos started in the now-demolished Robert Taylor and Ida B. Wells public housing complexes from factions of the Gangster Disciples and the Black Disciples street gangs, according to prosecutors.

Among the killings the gang allegedly committed was the 2006 shooting of Wilbert Moore, a police informant who had provided an earlier tip that led to the seizure of narcotics and high-powered weapons from an apartment controlled by the Hobos. In November 2013, another informant, Keith Daniels, was fatally shot outside his Dolton apartment in front of his wife and children, allegedly by Poe, prosecutors said.

Bogovich, a known drug dealer, was killed Nov. 24, 2006, after associates of his had taken $17,000 from Bush in exchange for a kilogram of cocaine that turned out to be fake, according to prosecutors.

On the night of the slaying, Chicago police had stopped Bush and Council after their van was spotted suspiciously circling the McKinley Park neighborhood, court records show. About half an hour after police told them to leave, Bogovich was shot in front of a friend's house in the 1800 block of West 34th Place.

Prosecutors on Monday showed the jury gruesome photographs of the crime scene, including one with a large pool of blood on the sidewalk where Bogovich fell, his white ski cap crumpled next to Pellegrino's car keys. Another photo depicted Pellegrino's bloody handprint on the kitchen door of a nearby home where she had run for help.

Pellegrino testified she identified Bush as the shooter from a photo array shown to her by police the next day at Stroger Hospital, where Bogovich was on life support. A month later, Bush was charged with first-degree murder in Cook County after Pellegrino identified him again in a physical lineup.

Bush was acquitted of the charges after a bench trial in December 2009, court records show.