Gary man gets 60 years in carjacker's killing

Chicago Tribune

01-07-2025

A Gary man was sentenced Tuesday to 60 years in a carjacker's killing.
When Leroy McCambry stole a Jeep from an East 5th Avenue Citgo gas station in Gary on April 2, 2024, he unwittingly interrupted Rashad Thompson reselling marijuana edibles inside, court records allege.
His brother, Maurice Thompson, pulled up in a Chevrolet Equinox. McCambry ended up getting chased and shot on the road, flipping and wrecking a home's garage on the city's west side 2 miles away.
A jury convicted Rashad Thompson, 38, of murder May 8.
He has said he was innocent and would both appeal and file for a motion to correct error — in a bid for a new trial.
Thompson repeatedly clashed with his trial lawyers Michael Campbell and Ferdinand Alvarez over his legal strategy. He threatened to fire them during the middle of his trial. They withdrew from his case on May 19.
Prosecutors dismissed Maurice Thompson's case in January, then recharged him on May 22.
Rashad Thompson spoke during most of his hour-long hearing Tuesday — mainly disputing details in his sentencing paperwork — where he also accused his public defender, Brandon Hicks, of not serving his legal interests.
Hicks told Senior Judge Kathleen Lang that Thompson's children would be negatively impacted by a prison stint. He also noted Thompson's fiance wrote a letter of support.
Lang noted Thompson was not happy with his various lawyers. That would have to be part of his appeal, she told him.
Thompson filed a motion on his own to set aside the trial verdict. She told him there were 'no grounds' and denied it.
'Today, we are going to sentencing,' she said.
Deputy Prosecutor Jacquelyn Altpeter read a letter from McCambry's mother.
'I hope one day you regret what you did,' she wrote.
She asked for 63 years.
Thompson claimed he was at the gas station buying lottery tickets.
Lang began to cut him off when he started disputing some of the case's facts while addressing McCambry's family.
'Clearly, I didn't do this,' he said.
You made it clear you don't agree with the verdict, the judge told him.
McCambry, 22, of Chicago, was found fatally shot once in the torso in the vehicle under a pile of debris on the 300 block of Hayes Street, documents show. The Jeep was shot 12 times, according to prosecutors.
After the crash, two men got out of the other vehicle.
'Where he at,' one said.
According to court records, Rashad and Maurice Thompson split up, not realizing McCambry was in the crashed garage. They ran back and took off. Witnesses said both men had guns. Inside the Jeep, cops found a white paper bag with five pouches with over 170 grams of 'Kushy Punch' marijuana edibles sold in Michigan and California.
The chase took less than 10 minutes.
Afterward, Rashad Thompson changed his clothes, went back to the gas station and later called 911 as if he was the victim, prosecutors said at trial.
Campbell argued at trial there was a 1.6-mile gap. No video picked up the shooting. Prosecutors couldn't prove Rashad was at the crash scene, or fired the bullets that killed McCambry.
Their best witness — a woman who called 911 after the crash — picked multiple people from a lineup and only told police a couple days later that she saw a gun.
She never mentioned his client's prominent face tattoos, despite being a few feet away.
Another man — whose doorbell camera recorded the crash — couldn't give police a better description of the two armed men.
A Lake County ballistics expert noted his bullet examination was inconclusive, Campbell said. No casings were recovered. There was no cell phone GPS data that put his client there, he said.
Altpeter countered that his characterization was 'incorrect.'
She replayed the woman's 911 call where she described a 'brown SUV' — i.e. the Equinox — and heard shots before the Jeep crashed. The surrounding evidence — gas station video, license plate readers, traffic cameras, 911 calls, video from the crash site — added up, she told jurors.