Left inset: Jaquan Blalock (Will County Sheriff’s Office). Right inset: Orbeez toy gel weapons (Volusia County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The area near the Warren Sharpe Playground on the 400 block of South Joliet Street in Joliet, Ill., where Antoine Shropshire, was shot 25 times (Google Maps).
A 19-year-old in Illinois is facing a first-degree murder charge for gunning down a 16-year-old near a playground — shooting him 25 times “in daylight” with “numerous” children nearby — after a kid in the neighborhood complained to the young man about “older boys” taking toy weapons from the youth and “shooting them” with the toys, cops say.
Jaquan Blalock, who was 17 at the time of the May 2023 shooting, is accused of using a gun with a “switch and extended magazine” to take Antoine Shropshire’s life following the alleged dispute over the Orbeez guns — technically toys that shoot gel balls, although some look like real guns — being taken, according to The Herald-News, a local news website.
Charging documents obtained by the Herald-News have prosecutors pointing to the Orbeez fiasco as what ultimately brought Blalock near the park that day with his pistol, they say.
“Older boys were taking their Orbeez guns from them and shooting them with their Orbeez guns,” according to a court petition filed by prosecutors on April 14, per the Herald-News. Blalock set upon Shropshire “in daylight near a park with numerous adults and children nearby,” the prosecutors said.
He allegedly shot the teen 25 times with another individual.
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Surveillance video from nearby shows Blalock standing over Shropshire at one point — with the boy on the ground dying — before he “unloaded his gun into him,” according to prosecutors. The other suspect allegedly fired his gun at others in the area.
After being arrested, Blalock was booked at the River Valley Juvenile Detention Center in Joliet, where he allegedly attacked a fellow prisoner.
“[Blalock] made a statement about the incident that it was ‘mob [expletive]’ and ‘bound to happen,’” prosecutors said.
Blalock’s attorneys have filed a motion asking for pretrial release.
The Will County judge overseeing the case is expected to make a ruling on April 22.
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