CHICAGO – A 15-year-old boy was arrested last week in connection with the September death of a 74-year-old Chicago man, who was beaten with a baseball bat and set on fire.
The teen, whose name was withheld due to his age, faces charges of first-degree murder and concealment of homicidal death in the Sept. 22 death of Earl Miller, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Miller’s body was found next to a home in the Fernwood neighborhood of the city.
His autopsy determined he died of multiple blunt force injuries, the newspaper reported.
Chicago police officials last month released surveillance footage of two suspects in the case. One suspect was a young Black man with dreadlocks and a multicolor backpack who was recorded by surveillance footage at a nearby convenience store.
The second suspect, who appeared younger, was spotted walking outside.
Police officials reported that the 15-year-old was arrested Wednesday on the Near West Side of the city, the Sun-Times reported.
Miller’s niece, Braxton Usher, told the newspaper that her family is relieved that her uncle’s case “isn’t going unnoticed.”
“No one deserves to die like that at all,” Usher said. “I wonder how he was feeling, or I wonder what he was thinking.
“Stuff like that, it eats at you.”
Usher said she, her children and her uncle were all living at her father’s house at the time of his slaying. Her uncle, who was a boxer in his youth before driving a truck for the city, had played an important part in her upbringing and had been close to her own children.
Now, her children ask her where their Uncle Earl is.
“Me not being able to give them that answer, it just hurts,” she told the Sun-Times.
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Usher, who wears some of Miller’s ashes around her neck, said she believes her uncle is now at peace with his mother, who died several years ago. The two were close, she said.
“He definitely was a mama’s boy,” she said.
Anyone with information about Miller’s killing is asked to call police at 312-747-8271.
