A 37-year-old man is facing a first-degree murder charge more than 13 months after a deadly early-morning shooting in an alley off South Cottage Grove Avenue in Woodlawn. Chicago police say Dominque Lewis approached a 34-year-old man near the alley and opened fire, and the victim was pronounced dead at the scene after suffering multiple gunshot wounds.
The shooting happened on the 6600 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue on August 10, 2025, according to WGN-TV. Public records and community memorials later identified the victim as 34-year-old Dominique “Domo” Hogan, who was shot multiple times around 5:20 a.m. and pronounced dead in the alley, according to the National Gun Violence Memorial. Police had initially reported an unidentified 34-year-old victim before public records confirmed Hogan's identity.
Chicago police caught up with Lewis on the Near West Side, where he was taken into custody, the station's report states. He now faces one felony count of first-degree murder, per police, and is scheduled to appear in court for a detention hearing today.
A Weekend That Ranked Among Chicago's Bloodiest of 2025
The killing unfolded during one of the most violent stretches Chicago saw all year. Sunday, August 10, 2025, was recorded as the second-most violent single day of 2025 citywide, with 23 people shot and at least five killed over that weekend, according to crime tracking cited by CBS Chicago. Citywide figures for that weekend showed 38 total shooting victims across Chicago, underscoring just how chaotic the hours surrounding Hogan's death were for police departments across the city.
The alley where Hogan died sits in Chicago's Woodlawn community area, where South Cottage Grove Avenue traditionally divides East Woodlawn from West Woodlawn, per Wikipedia. The scene also falls within the Chicago Police Department's 3rd District, known as Grand Crossing, whose station house sits just four blocks south at 7040 South Cottage Grove Avenue and covers Woodlawn, Greater Grand Crossing, and South Shore.
Another Entry in a Violent Corridor's Recent History
Hogan's death adds to a troubling pattern along South Cottage Grove Avenue. Hoodline has reported on a fatal ambush in the nearby 6700 block, and a fatal drive-by shooting struck the 8200 block of the same corridor in June 2026. A Christmas night shooting in the 7400 block and a shooting near the 3rd District station in the 7000 block round out a string of gunfire that has repeatedly hit the same stretch of road in recent years.
Critically wounded gunshot victims from Woodlawn are typically taken to the Level I Adult Trauma Center at University of Chicago Medicine in nearby Hyde Park, which opened in May 2018 after extensive community advocacy to close a decades-long trauma care gap on the South Side. Hogan, however, was pronounced dead at the scene of the alley shooting rather than transported for treatment.
What Lewis Faces in Court
If convicted of first-degree murder under Illinois law, Lewis would face a mandatory baseline prison sentence of 20 to 60 years served at 100 percent, according to FindLaw. Because the case involves a firearm that caused a death, a mandatory enhancement could add 15 to 25 years or up to natural life in prison, since Illinois abolished capital punishment in 2011.
Under the Illinois Pretrial Fairness Act, part of the state's SAFE-T Act, cash bail no longer exists, and prosecutors must present clear and convincing evidence at a detention hearing that a defendant committed a detainable offense and poses a real safety threat, according to the 19th Judicial Circuit Court of Illinois. Cook County State's Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke has a standing policy, enacted on her first day in office, requiring prosecutors to automatically file for pre-trial detention in all murder and Class X felony cases, per the Cook County State's Attorney's Office. That policy explains why prosecutors are expected to seek Lewis's continued detention at today's hearing.
CPD Area One detectives spent more than a year working the case as a cold case before taking Lewis into custody, according to CBS Chicago. It remains unclear what evidence ultimately led investigators to identify him as a suspect, and the specific motive behind the confrontation in the alley has not been disclosed.
