Jakub Marchewka

Jakub “Kuba” Marchewka, a 28-year-old White man and Polish immigrant, lived in Chicago’s Belmont Cragin neighborhood. His death on Easter Sunday left his family and friends reeling with a grief they knew would last. “The pain will not go away,” his friend Matthew Zdunek said shortly after the loss. “It is not going to get easier for a really long time.”

The fatal encounter began over a minor incident on April 4, 2021. Around 4:30 p.m., Marchewka stopped at Max’s Food & Liquor in the Portage Park neighborhood. As he opened his car door in the parking lot, he accidentally bumped the car parked next to him. According to his family, a woman in the other car began yelling, and soon the car’s owner came out of the store. The confrontation escalated into a physical fight between Marchewka and the other man. Marchewka’s father was with him at the time. During the altercation, the other man pulled out a gun and shot Marchewka in the chest. He was rushed to Loyola University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

The shooting was captured on surveillance video, but the shooter fled the scene and no immediate arrests were made. In the following weeks, hundreds of people from Chicago’s Polish community and the Northwest Side marched to demand justice for Marchewka. They gathered around a growing memorial near the parking lot at Addison Street and Austin Avenue, calling for an end to the city’s gun violence.

Nearly seven weeks later, in May 2021, authorities arrested 24-year-old Everardo Olmos. He had been identified from video surveillance footage and was charged with first-degree murder. A judge denied Olmos bail, and he was held in custody to await trial.

Olmos’s case was heard in a Cook County bench trial, where a judge decides the verdict instead of a jury. In February 2026, the judge found Everardo Olmos not guilty of murder, acquitting him of all charges. The judge ruled that Olmos had acted in self-defense and that prosecutors had failed to prove their case. In his ruling, the judge stated, “It was Mr. Marchewka who was the aggressor” in the physical confrontation. After spending nearly five years in jail, Olmos was released from custody.