Nearly 18 months after a hit-and-run crash that killed a mother and her infant son on Chicago’s South Side, authorities say a suspect has been charged in the case – indicted while in jail for more than a year on unrelated charges.
For the last year-and-a-half, Sebastian Taylor has been trying to get answers about the crash that killed his wife Selina Taylor and their 4-month-old son Sebastian Taylor, Jr. as they returned home from a Juneteenth celebration in the early hours of June 20, 2021.
“I don’t know what the truth is. But that’s what I want to know: the truth, like what really happened,” Sebastian Taylor said in an interview late last year.
NBC 5 Investigates’ continuing series on hit-and-run crashes has documented repeated examples of cases with seemingly obvious clues that have languished without Chicago police making an arrest. This one was a prime example: the car was left behind after the driver fled on foot, and a surveillance camera captured the offender fleeing the scene. Despite that evidence, the case dragged on – and Sebastian Taylor couldn’t get anyone to tell him why.
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“They won’t even talk to me,” he said earlier this year.
Authorities now say 27-year-old Tevin Gray, of Rockford, has been indicted on two counts of reckless homicide and two counts of leaving the scene of an accident involving death in connection with the crash. He has not yet entered a plea and is scheduled to appear in court Dec. 20.
Records show he’s been in the Winnebago County Jail on weapon and drug charges since Nov. 17, 2021, less than two weeks after NBC 5 Investigates aired its first report on the growing hit-and-run menace.
NBC 5 Investigates found repeated arrests for Gray dating back to 2016, including multiple drug and gun charges, allegations of fleeing police, and a 2018 domestic battery charge where he was accused of attempting to strangle the same woman who was listed as the owner of the car that hit Sebastian Taylor and his family.
Sebastian Taylor has long asked why he was kept in the dark, and why the investigation was taking so long, especially after Chicago police told him they had the entire incident on video.
“He said that everything is on video,” Taylor told NBC 5 Investigates. “He said they seen the guys – they know who the guys is.”
Chicago police declined to comment on the case – and that’s not unusual. CPD has never agreed to any of NBC 5 Investigates’ repeated requests for an interview about the department’s shockingly low clearance rate of just .3% of the thousands of hit-and-run crashes that plague Chicago each year.
NBC 5 Investigates also has more than half a dozen lawsuits pending against CPD and other agencies for information they have refused to release in response to open records requests, including three on the Taylor family’s crash alone.
