Danny Rios Killed In Self-Defense? Attorney Jeff Tomczak Seeks Self-Defense Jury Instruction For Pat Gleason

JOLIET, IL — The murder trial of Patrick Gleason came to an end on Tuesday afternoon after defense attorney Jeff Tomczak finished calling his witnesses and the Will County State's Attorney's Office rested as well.

Outside the presence of the jury, Gleason told Judge Vincent Cornelius he decided not to take the witness stand to testify in his own defense in the fatal shooting of Izzy's bartender Danny Rios III during the early morning hours of March 9, 2018.

After the judge sent the jury away for a while, the lawyers for both sides argued for much of the afternoon on the specifics of the jury instructions.

Tomczak wanted a jury instruction suggesting that Gleason killed the 52-year-old bartender in self-defense.

The basis for Tomczak's argument, he claimed, was due to one of the Izzy's Bar patrons, Barb Lopez, telling others seated around her at the bar to "tell that mother f***** I'm packing a gun."

Tomczak said Lopez made her statement moments after Gleason returned to the bar, after being thrown out of the establishment 45 minutes earlier. When Gleason returned, shortly after 1 a.m., video surveillance showed he stood and hid in the hallway entrance for several minutes, causing concern for bartender Rios and other patrons seated in the bar.

When Rios emerged from behind the bar to investigate Izzy's mystery guest, Gleason emerged wearing a black ski mask over his face and shot Rios in the face at point blank range, killing Rios instantly, surveillance video of the shooting showed.

"It's a crazy unique circumstance," Tomczak told Judge Cornelius. "(Lopez) did it to scare the guy and the guy who was out there ... Let the jury make a determination. The evidence is there. You can't take it away."

Prosecutor Jim Long begged to differ with Tomczak's effort to get a self-defense jury instruction.

"He is going into a bar with the intent to kill or hurt people. The jury should not be considering self-defense. There is no force that is threatened against this defendant. When this defendant walked into the bar, there is zero threat of force specifically as to Danny Rios. There is zero threat of force exhibited upon this defendant ... He just shoots him and kills him and drops him right there. He shot the first person that came around the corner and then went into the bar to actively shoot."

Long argued that based upon the Ilinois case law that he cited, "they fail. They should not get self-defense. He's masked. He's got gloves on ... those people are reacting to his aggression."

After hearing several minutes of arguments from Long and Tomczak, Judge Cornelius informed the courtroom he had made his decision in regard to Tomczak's request for a self-defense jury instruction to be considered during the start of Wednesday's jury deliberations.

"This jury instruction will be denied," Cornelius declared.

Tomczak insisted that Gleason was in a good mood throughout that Thursday night. He and his date for the evening, Pamela Griffin, went to see REO Speedwagon at the Rialto in downtown Joliet and on their way home, the couple stopped at Izzy's Bar, where Gleason grabbed a drink at the bar while Griffin played pool. However, Gleason was thrown out of the bar by one of the regulars after repeatedly disobeying the bar's rules prohibiting indoor smoking inside the bar, patrons testified.

After the second incident, witnesses said Gleason repeatedly referred to the bar by a Mexican racial slur and kept vowing to shoot the place up. A bar regular then confiscated Gleason's jacket and banged it against a wall to check for a gun, which Gleason did not have at the time, according to testimony.

Then, 45 minutes later, Gleason returned to the bar armed with his loaded Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistol. Prosecutors say he fired a total of three shots: one to Rios' face, killing him, and a second shot as he chased after Izzy's regular customer Artis Henderson, which missed. The third gunshot came during a struggle for the gun, and the bullet struck Izzy's son, Thomas, in the stomach.

The day after the murder, Tomczak told Judge Cornelius, it was Anthony Sraj, the same Izzy's Bar regular who tossed Gleason out of the building, who went to the Joliet police station of his own accord to alert the detectives that "I think I'm the one that tripped his trigger."

As far as Gleason's other felony crimes, including the attempted murder of Henderson and the reckless discharge of a gun crime against Thomas Izquierdo, Judge Cornelius refused to accept any of Tomczak's additional jury instructions that could have allowed the jury to consider lesser-included crimes.

The Will County State's Attorney's Office trio of prosecutors will offer their closing arguments on Wednesday afternoon, and the jury may begin its deliberations around 2 p.m.