News

One Beardstown man dead, another faces murder charge

Posted October 08, 2007 11:00 pm

Jayette Bolinski

A Beardstown father who excelled at soccer died Monday morning after being shot multiple times in the front yard of an apartment building.

Jacob Leyva Leon, 30, was pronounced dead at 5:18 a.m. at Culbertson Memorial Hospital in Rushville, where he was taken after being shot with a handgun at Eighth and State streets in Beardstown.

Police arrested 22-year-old Rene Velazquez about 7 a.m. He allegedly was found hiding inside a garage in the 500 block of West Seventh Street, said Beardstown Police Chief Tom Schlueter.

Velazquez was expected to be transferred to the Schuyler County Jail. He is being held on a preliminary charge of first-degree murder and is expected to appear before a judge sometime today (Tuesday).

The shooting took place about 3:30 a.m. and was prompted by an earlier argument between the two men, Schlueter said. He declined to elaborate on what prompted that confrontation.

"There had been in an altercation earlier in the evening between the two gentlemen, and it went too far," he said.

Leon had lived in Beardstown for eight years. Velazquez has lived there a little less than two years, Schlueter said.

Police said witnesses to the shooting identified Velazquez as the gunman and gave police a description of the car in which he fled. Police later found Velazquez in the Seventh Street garage and the car in the 1000 block of Jackson Street.

Schlueter said an acquaintance of Velazquez lives on the property where the garage is.

The homicide was Beardstown's first since Aug. 10, 1996, when 28-year-old Jorge Arambula shot 22-year-old Travis Brewer in the El Flamingo tavern. Brewer was a friend of another Beardstown man whose ex-wife was living with Arambula.

Arambula was detained five days later at his home in Monterrey, Mexico. But Mexican authorities refused to extradite him to Illinois. He has never been tried for the murder in Mexico, and the case remains open at the Beardstown Police Department.

Before that, Beardstown had not had a murder for seven years.

Schlueter said authorities were concerned that Velazquez, who is Hispanic, would try to flee the country as Arambula did.

"That's why we had to find him and find him fast," he said.

Cass County Coroner Wyatt Sager, whose funeral home is handling arrangements for Leon's family, said Leon played in a men's soccer league in Beardstown and was in the soccer championship three times. He did agricultural work and odd jobs in the community. He has one son, Sager said.

Jayette Bolinski can be reached at (217) 788-1530 or jayette.bolinski@sj-r.com.

Article Categories
News