A maniac driver said to his victims, “I’ve got something for you, motherf*****s,” before mowing down three men and killing them outside a Chicago gay bar.
Tavis Dunbar, 34, has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder after he surrendered Monday after the deaths of Jaylen Ausley, 23, Devonta Vivetter, 27, and Donald Huey, 25, around 5am on August 14 in front of the Jeffery Pub had asked.
A fourth man, Carlee McKinney, 21, was seriously injured after Dunbar plowed into the car he had loaned the men at 5am.
It is not currently considered a hate crime because there is currently no evidence that he did it “because of people’s sexual orientation, race, creed or anything else,” Chicago Chief Brendan Deenihan said at a press conference .
Videos circulating on social media show Dunbar shouting the foul statement before speeding down the road at 60mph in his cousin’s car before plowing into a group of people who are fighting. The video reportedly shows bodies being thrown into the air, with at least one of them landing a block away.
“The defendant essentially stepped on the gas pedal and drove straight into four people, killing three of them,” said Cook County Assistant District Attorney Danny Hanichak.
“The accelerator pedal is at least 99 percent depressed and the defendant did not touch the brakes once before the impact.”
Tavis Dunbar, 34, of Chicago, has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder after he turned himself in on Monday
After the accident, the attacker reportedly parked his car just a few blocks away and was seen walking around the car while on the phone with a friend who lived nearby. He reportedly drove to this friend’s house, who then drove him to another friend’s house.
He was kicked out of the bar and wrecked his cousin’s cars after people “started approaching him,” according to Hanichak.
However, authorities said there is currently no evidence Dunbar was threatened.
The friend later saw video of the attack online and realized it was Dunbar, according to CWB Chicago. When she confronted him about it, he asked her for an alibi. She refused on the grounds that he had killed two people.
“Actually there are three,” he corrected her.
Police said they did not know Dunbar’s motive and that he had invoked the Fifth Amendment.
Dunbar’s attorney, Robert Kerr, said prosecutors “would have a hard time proving the case.”
“My concern is that the state is going too far with the first-degree murder charge,” Kerr said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. “And that Mr Dunbar is being wrongly detained with no possibility of bail.”
He also insisted his client – who is being held without bail – “poses neither an escape risk nor a danger to society”.
“Rather than fleeing the jurisdiction, as someone with a guilty conscience might do, Mr Dunbar made arrangements to surrender peacefully,” he argued.
The incident happened outside of the Jeffery Pub in South Side Chicago
A group of men were seen arguing outside Jeffery’s Pub on August 14 before Dunbar hit them
Bodies fly from top of car after Dunbar hits them at 60mph
Still, Huey’s sister said she was relieved that Dunbar is currently behind bars and not “just walking around here thinking it’s cool that he killed all these people.”
Ausley’s mother also said it was “a comfort to know that we are so much closer to justice”.
She remembers her son, who recently graduated from the University of Michigan, as easy-going and someone who loved to dance and laugh.
It was also revealed that Dunbar had been sentenced to two years in prison for assaulting his 11-year-old brother in 2012. He was also charged with hitting someone in the head with a baseball bat during an argument over money in 2007.
