More than four years after food delivery driver Qiaoming Shao was gunned down on Chicago's Near West Side, the man accused in his killing has pleaded guilty — not to murder, but to a lesser charge that will send him to prison for 15 years. Anthony Watts entered the plea to one count of attempted aggravated vehicular hijacking with a firearm, according to court records, closing out a case that began with a far more serious accusation.
Court records show the murder charge originally filed against Watts was dropped as part of the plea, according to ABC7 Chicago. Watts will receive credit for 1,905 days already served, the outlet reports, time that will count against his 15-year sentence in the Illinois Department of Corrections.
Shao, 57, was killed on September 27, 2021, in the 1300 block of West Grenshaw Street while he was out delivering food, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Police said Watts approached Shao and opened fire, striking him in the chest. Shao was rushed to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, the paper reported at the time.
An Arrest Came Quickly, but the Case Took Years
Watts was arrested shortly after the shooting, per the same Sun-Times account, though it would take years for the case to reach its conclusion through a guilty plea rather than a trial. The Near West Side shooting had initially drawn scrutiny from police over whether it was tied to a robbery or carjacking attempt gone wrong, a detail that underscores why the eventual charge centered on attempted vehicular hijacking rather than straightforward robbery.
Shao's death folded into a broader wave of carjacking cases that gripped Chicago around that period. Then-police superintendent David Brown said in February 2022 that carjackings had dropped 20 percent over the first two months of that year, even as the rate remained more than three times higher than it had been before the pandemic, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
A Separate Case Shows Harsher Federal Penalties
The plea in Shao's case stands in contrast to at least one other Chicago-area carjacking prosecution handled at the federal level. A Chicago man who carjacked a vehicle at gunpoint on the city's West Side and fired a handgun while attempting to carjack a second vehicle was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois. That case was prosecuted separately and involved different facts and charges than those brought against Watts.
For Shao's family and the broader community of delivery drivers who continue to work Chicago's streets at all hours, the guilty plea marks a legal resolution to a case that began with a routine delivery run and ended in a fatal shooting. The dropped murder charge and the specifics of the plea deal were detailed in court records reviewed by ABC7 Chicago, which first reported the development.
