Daywatch: Rockford remembers four slain in rampage
Good morning, Chicago.
Craig Garr stood in his driveway yesterday morning in southeast Rockford and watched a tow service load his Jeep Grand Cherokee onto the bed of a truck. Blood was still spattered on his driveway. It was on his door frame, on his yard decorations and all over two rocks that usually sat by his front door but on Thursday were lying near a set of deep tire tracks on his front lawn.
From his kitchen window and then his front door on Wednesday, Garr, 74, witnessed a man stab, beat up and run over the neighborhood’s longtime mail carrier, Jay Larson, killing him in an attack that authorities said spanned multiple homes throughout the neighborhood and left four dead and seven injured.
Court records show that Christian Soto, a 22-year-old resident of Winnebago County, admitted to “taking out the mailman” on Garr’s front lawn just before he stabbed three more residents in another home.
After Soto fled that home, prosecutors said he broke into a home down the block where three girls were watching a movie during a sleepover. He struck all three with a bat, killing 15-year-old Jenna Newcomb and injuring the other two.
Rockford Mayor Thomas McNamara said Thursday that Jenna’s mother “wants the community to know that Jenna died saving her sister and her friend and protecting them.”
Soto was arrested while fleeing the scene of another attack. He told authorities that he went on the violent spree after becoming paranoid under the influence of drugs he thought were contaminated.
Read the full story from the Tribune’s Caroline Kubzansky with photos from the vigil held in the aftermath from the Tribune’s Eileen T. Meslar.
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