North Chicagoan guilty of cabbie’s ’07 death

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Amittie Brown

Updated: March 16, 2012 8:16AM

Sentencing will be in March for a North Chicago man found guilty of first-degree murder for the brutal beating of a Waukegan cab driver in 2007 over a $35 to $45 debt.

Amittie Brown, 23, was accused of fatally beating cab driver Joseph Burrell, 66, along with another North Chicago man, Michael Vargas. A Lake County jury found Brown guilty on Friday. Vargas, 51, pleaded guilty earlier to concealing the death and was sentenced to jail time and probation.

Burrell was found unconscious, but breathing in a field in the 2400 block of Martin Luther King Drive in North Chicago on the morning of Sept. 30, 2007. It was only his second day of work for the cab company in North Chicago.

His supervisor said Burrell had dropped off a group of sailors at Gurnee Mills earlier in the evening, and then told dispatchers he’d be stopping somewhere in North Chicago before returning to work.

Burrell went to a home near the field, where he got into an argument with Brown and Vargas, according to police. Burrell owed between $35 and $45 to Brown.

“He was no match for the defendant. It was exceptionally brutal,” said Lake County Assistant State’s Attorney Mary Kay Foy, who prosecuted the case with Assistant State’s Attorney Mary Staton.

Brown was charged with two aggravating factors. One, the victim was over 60 years old, and the second was that it was an exceptionally brutal and heinous crime indicating wanton cruelty, said Foy.

Brown beat Burrell with a gun and with his fists that left the victim with bleeding on the brain, multiple bruised ribs and other injuries. He was taken to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, Park Ridge, where he died a week later.

Prosecutors said the two assailants dragged the victim from the back of their home into the field and left him there for over 10 hours before he was discovered. “He was gasping for air” when he was discovered, said Foy.

During the trial, Public Defenders Karen Levi and Timothy MacArthur said their client was mentally retarded and therefore was incapable of knowingly and intelligently waiving his Miranda rights. They called an expert who testified that Brown had an IQ in the 50s. But prosecutors called a licensed clinical psychologist, Karen Chantry, who testified Brown’s intelligence was in the average-to-lower range in her opinion.

Brown faces 20 years to life in prison at his sentencing.

Lt. George McClary of the North Chicago Police Department said Tuesday that although the process took some time, “it will give resolution to the family and some closure.”