A Cook County judge sentenced Josue Mendoza Barrera to 42 years in prison for the murder of 16-year-old Ashley Sanchez, who died in August 2021 when a minivan chased her family's car through Chicago's Hermosa neighborhood after a White Sox game and slammed into it at the 4500 block of West Armitage. Mendoza Barrera was found guilty on two counts of murder and one count of failure to report a crash, and he will receive credit for 1,768 days already served.
According to ABC7 Chicago, Ashley was heading into her junior year at Waubonsie Valley High School, where she was a talented bowler chasing a college scholarship and hoping to eventually become a prosecutor after studying criminal justice. Her parents told the station that on the night of the crash they had just dropped off a friend in the city after leaving the White Sox game when two people in a tan minivan displayed a gun and began pursuing their car. Ashley was killed in the backseat during the crash that followed.
A Chase That Began With a Gun at a Red Light
The pursuit turned deadly, according to Cook County prosecutors as reported by FOX 32 Chicago, after the suspect racked the slide of a handgun at a red light, prompting Ashley's father to try to drive his family to the Chicago Police Department's Grand Central District station for safety. The minivan struck their Dodge Charger, pushing it into a parked semi-trailer. The impact left Ashley with a fatal head injury in the backseat, and the family was transported to the hospital.
Mendoza Barrera left the scene after the crash. Investigators later used facial recognition technology on security footage from a local liquor store, recorded about an hour before the crash, to identify him — footage that showed him making a purchase, per the same FOX 32 Chicago report. Separate footage from a Walgreens parking lot showed him drinking beforehand. He was arrested three months later, on November 3, 2021, in the southwest suburb of Lemont, ending a multi-jurisdictional search, as reported by Univision. He was found driving a vehicle bearing the same license plates as the minivan involved in the chase.
Charges Upgraded From Reckless Homicide to Murder
Cook County prosecutors initially charged Mendoza Barrera with reckless homicide following his arrest, but later upgraded the charges to first-degree murder. Prosecutors also revealed that at the time of the fatal crash, Mendoza Barrera was driving on a license that was currently suspended because of a 2016 DUI charge, and he was wanted on an active warrant related to a 2020 driving offense; he had been arrested or had a case in Lemont in January 2020.
Mendoza Barrera received a 42-year sentence.
A Broader Pattern of Unpunished Hit-and-Runs
Ashley's case stands out precisely because it ended in an arrest and conviction — outcomes that remain rare in Chicago hit-and-run cases. An analysis published by the law firm Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard P.C. found that Chicago averages roughly 30,000 hit-and-run crashes a year, with police making arrests in less than 1% of cases overall — 0.8% in the most recent year of complete audited records — and under 10% even in cases involving fatal or severe injuries. That works out to roughly 82 hit-and-run collisions per day, the firm's analysis found. According to the City of Chicago Data Portal, its traffic-crash dataset covers crashes on city streets within Chicago limits and under Chicago Police Department jurisdiction. The Illinois Department of Transportation provides fatal-crash data for the current year and historical data from years past, along with crash data for each Illinois city.
The same analysis found that fleeing hit-and-run drivers were responsible for more than half of Chicago's pedestrian fatalities in recent years, more than double the national average rate of 24%. It's a statistic that underscores how unusual it was for investigators to track Mendoza Barrera down and for prosecutors to secure a murder conviction rather than let the case go unsolved. According to Illinois.gov's "Analysis of Illinois Police Pursuit Reporting: 2023," Illinois recorded 1,023 pursuit-driving reports in 2023, with crash, injury and fatality trends tracked from 2016 to 2023.
A Separate Lawsuit Over Jail Conditions
A federal civil-rights case involving Mendoza Barrera addressed the use of handcuffs and leg shackles during a medical emergency, according to court filings reviewed by Justia Law. The docket includes a May 19, 2026, entry, and the litigation remains separate from the murder case that has now concluded with sentencing.
