Ex-Con Caught Attempted Murder Case For Pulling Gun Attack Along With ‘Little Killer’: Cops

JOLIET, IL — A jailed ex-convict indicted Wednesday on two counts of attempted attempted murder was charged with gunning down two men on Marcella Avenue just over a year ago.

A second man, 23-year-old Daeviontae “Little Killer” Pruitte, was also charged with the shooting. Pruitte was arrested shortly after the bloody attack and remains in custody at the Will County jail.

Deputies sent to Marcella Avenue in March 2016 found Bernard Marble, 29, riddled with bullets but still breathing. Marble was taken to Presence St. Joseph Medical Center and then airlifted to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood.

Detectives at the time said they believed the second wounded man, 34-year-old Damon Stanislaus, was merely “visiting the Marcella Avenue residence to purchase illegal drugs” when a “vehicle pulled up, two subjects exited the vehicle and opened fire.”

Stanislaus was “struck in the abdomen as he was sitting in his vehicle and fled the scene before deputies arrived,” police said. “He later arrived at the hospital where he was treated and released to sheriff’s investigators.”

Marble likely was the “intended target of the shooting,” according to police, while Stanislaus “was not the target and … was in the wrong place, at the wrong time.”

Cook is scheduled to be sentenced for an unrelated gun case Friday. That case stemmed from a shootout between the occupants of two vehicles, police said at the time. Cook was arrested with two other men following the July incident.

Cook was released from prison in September 2015. He served time for possessing a firearm as a felon and the possession of a controlled substance.

Pruitte allegedly shot Marble and Stanislaus eight months after he was found not guilty of murder by Will County Judge Carla Alessio Policandriotes. He had spent a year and a half in custody while he was charged with shooting down 54-year-old Timothy Egner outside the Center Street Wendy’s in August 2012.

Judge Alessio Policandriotes found Pruitte not guilty despite prosecutors claiming he referred to himself as the “killer” and the “little killer” during recorded jailhouse telephone conversations. During Pruitte’s trial, one of his attorneys explained that calling oneself a “killer” is merely a slang expression and similar to saying “player.”

Egner was waiting outside the Wendy’s to pick up a family member who had worked the night shift when he was slain.

Damon Cook | image via Will County Sheriff's Department