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For more than two hours Tuesday, Ana Lopez sat patiently in Room 110 at the Bridgeview Courthouse.
She was waiting on yet another status hearing to begin for the man charged with killing her husband almost a year ago.
The hearing lasted two minutes before the case was continued until February.
Afterwards, as she walked through the halls and out into the frigid late morning air, Lopez said, “It’s up to the Lord,” when asked her thoughts about the case.
Her husband, Morales Ricardo Lopez, 36, of Blue Island, was gunned down on Joliet Avenue near Joliet Road in Countryside early Feb. 17, 2024.
He was shot to death allegedly by Sisto Brito after a fight in the parking lot of a tavern on 47th Street in McCook.
There was an argument over how Brito had parked his car, police have said.
Brito – who is charged with one count of murder and two counts of attempted murder – did not appear in court Tuesday.
Brito allegedly shot another man that fateful early morning.
After a fistfight with Lopez and three other men, police said Brito allegedly retrieved a gun from his car and followed two of them, killing Lopez and wounding the other man.
Two other men had fled north on Joliet Avenue, police said.
Attorneys on both sides Tuesday told Cook County Circuit Court Judge John “Terry” Gallagher that discovery is still needed.
Gallagher scheduled Brito’s next status hearing for 9:30 a.m. Feb. 13, again in Room 110.
Lopez will be there, just as she has been for every status hearing in the legal process.
Asked how the holidays were for her and her family, Lopez said, “bad, very bad.”
The couple’s three children “are doing alright,” she said.
“I keep him alive in my heart,” she said of the high school sweetheart she married.
On Monday night, after the McCook Village Board meeting, Deputy Police Chief Dave DeLeshe was asked about the case.
“We’re still waiting on the lab. It takes years, (with) the backlog in the lab,” he said.
Brito remains in custody at Cook County Jail at 26th Street and California Avenue. He’s been in custody there since his arrest in Chicago.
“And he’s never done anything before. No (criminal) record. He just snapped,” DeLeshe said.
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