Nearly five years after a fatal shooting outside a River North nightclub, Chicago police say they have identified and arrested a suspect in the case. Rashawn Ward, 31, was taken into custody Tuesday and now faces one count of first-degree murder and one count of unlawful use of a weapon by a felon in the Sept. 18, 2021, killing of Royal Shorts, a 33-year-old man from Hammond, Indiana. Shorts was shot on the 800 block of North Orleans Street, and Ward is scheduled to appear for a detention hearing today in Cook County court.
Ward was arrested without incident by Chicago police and the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force on the 1700 block of North Spaulding Avenue, according to FOX 32 Chicago, which reported that he lists an address on the 200 block of North Lamon Avenue. Investigators identified Ward as the person responsible for the shooting, police said, though the investigation remains open. Shorts was standing near his own parked vehicle around 3:50 a.m. outside the LiqrBox nightclub at 873 North Orleans Street when a gunman inside a blue Volkswagen SUV opened fire, according to CWB Chicago.
A Blue SUV, Seven Shots, and a Death Outside LiqrBox
The gunman struck Shorts multiple times before fleeing, and officers recovered seven shell casings at the scene, the outlet's report noted. Shorts later died at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. It remains unclear whether the blue Volkswagen SUV described in the original police alert was ever recovered or tied to Ward, a detail that hasn't been addressed in available reporting.
Less than three weeks after Shorts was killed, another vehicle-based shooting struck roughly 100 feet away on the 900 block of North Orleans, wounding an Uber driver and two 15-year-old boys, the same outlet reported. That attack underscored safety concerns residents and businesses had already raised about late-night nightlife crowds along the Orleans Street corridor.
No Cash Bail, But a High Bar to Release
Ward's detention hearing will unfold under Illinois's Pretrial Fairness Act, which eliminated cash bail statewide in September 2023. For non-probationable forcible felonies like first-degree murder, the law requires prosecutors to prove by clear and convincing evidence that a defendant poses a specific safety threat or flight risk before a judge can order someone held pending trial, according to Illinois Legal Aid Online.
The weapons count adds its own exposure. Under Illinois statute 720 ILCS 5/24-1.1, unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon is generally a Class 3 felony carrying a mandatory two to 10 years in prison, with steeper Class 2 penalties for defendants on parole or with prior violent felony convictions, per Hirsch Law Group. Illinois law bars felons from possessing any firearm or ammunition regardless of ownership or intent.
A Cold Case Closes as Chicago's Homicide Numbers Keep Falling
Ward's arrest lands amid a dramatic shift in Chicago's homicide landscape since 2021, when the city logged 804 killings — a pandemic-era peak and nearly double last year's total, according to FOX 32 Chicago. In 2025, the city recorded 416 homicides, a 29% drop from the 587 counted in 2024 and the lowest annual total since 1965, while the Chicago Police Department also reported a 71% homicide clearance rate for 2025 — closing 296 cases — up sharply from 56% the year before.
A CWB Chicago analysis published in April found that a sizable share of those closures were older cases: 48 of the 140 murder charges Cook County prosecutors approved in 2025 stemmed from homicides committed in prior years, since federal reporting rules let departments log a clearance in the year an arrest happens rather than the year the crime occurred.
Case-resolution rates have not been even across the city. During the 2021 violent crime surge, Chicago's homicide clearance rate by prosecution stood at 21.7% in predominantly Black neighborhoods compared with 45.6% in predominantly White neighborhoods, according to data compiled by LIVE FREE Illinois. Police have not disclosed what evidence ultimately connected Ward to the River North shooting nearly five years after it happened, and the investigation remains open.
