Cicero Man Laughs At Jury After He's Found Guilty of Gunning Down Teen Obsession

A Cicero man’s deadly obsession with a teenage Romeoville girl will land him in prison, likely for the rest of his life.

A Will County jury took less than two and a half hours to find 24-year-old Erick Maya guilty of gunning down his teen lover after she spurned him and took up with a high school boyfriend.

Maya smirked as the verdict was read and laughed as the jury filed out of the courtroom.

Maya and his victim, Briana Valle, met through Facebook when she was only 13, her mother, Alicia Guerrero, said during the trial.

Briana ran off with Maya in August 2012 and was only returned after Guerrero launched a diligent and exhaustive search. But even after Briana was back—and ostensibly cut off from Maya—she maintained contact with him, Guerrero said. And he lavished her with gifts, including balloons, an engagement ring and a mawkish Valentine’s card in which Maya professed his undying love for the then 14-year-old.

In an effort to escape Maya, Guerrero and her husband moved their family out of Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood and settled in Romeoville. There, Guerrero said, Briana started dating a 17-year-old and was finally finished with the much-older Maya.

This infuriated the Cicero man, said prosecutor Chris Koch, and Maya alternately pleaded with and threatened Briana in an effort to win her back.

During his closing argument, Koch read some of the final Facebook message exchanges between Briana and Maya.

“I’m done. I want nothing to do with you,” Briana wrote.

“You said you would never leave me,” the mournful Maya complained.

“S—t changed though,” Briana responded. “You’re an a—hole. I deserve better.”

Maya took a cab from Cicero to Romeoville the morning of Feb. 13 and told the driver he would call him for a trip back. Maya then waited for the Romeoville High freshman to leave for school, and when Briana and her mother got in the family’s car, he allegedly crept up and opened fire through the passenger-side window.

Briana was hit in the head and died soon after. She was 15. Guerrero took a bullet to the neck and survived.

Prosecutor Jim Long called the killing an “assassination and an execution.”

“That was his Valentine’s Day present to Briana, because she was going to spend it with someone else,” Long said.

Briana’s father, Alejandro Valle, broke down during closing arguments and had to leave to courtroom. After the trial, juror Susan Heise said Valle’s emotional response was hard to watch.

Heise and fellow juror Amanda Wilson said the numerous Facebook and text messages Maya sent, as well as the fact that the police found him hiding under leaf bags in a backyard near Briana’s home in the wake of the shooting, helped them reach their decision. Wilson said she noticed Maya smirking after he was found guilty. Heise said she found it a “little creepy.”

May will be sentenced to prison next month. He faces 45 year to life.

Will County State’s Attorney had harsh words for Maya after the trial.

“Erick Maya is a cowardly manipulator who lured an innocent young girl into a romantic relationship and then shot her down in cold blood when she tried to free herself from his grasp,” Glasgow said. “Our hearts go out to Briana’s mother, who nearly lost her own life because of her efforts to save her daughter from this vicious predator.”

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