A former O’Hare Airport TSA agent allegedly shot and killed a man during a jealous rage in Chinatown last summer, then confessed to his co-workers and told friends he was ‘going dark,’ prosecutors said.
Humza D. Raja, 22 and charged with murder, appeared Sunday before Cook County Judge David Kelly, who ordered him detained. Raja, of Forest Glen on the Northwest Side, was due in court again on Wednesday.
On the morning of Aug. 25, Raja’s longtime friend called him to pick her up from an after hours nightclub following a scuffle that broke out between her and the victim, 28-year-old Jason Fox, who grabbed her hand as she left the bathroom, according to prosecutors. Fox was later kicked out of the club.
Video surveillance then showed Raja behind the wheel of a 2017 silver Porsche Cayenne near the club shortly before 7 a.m., roughly around the same time Fox was thrown out, according to prosecutors.
After Raja picked up his friend and she told him what happened, the two drove nearby to the 400 block of West Cermak Road and confronted Fox, prosecutors said.
A violent fight erupted when Raja demanded to know if Fox going to “take his woman” and Fox said yes, according to prosecutors. That’s when witnesses saw Raja holding a gun and heard three to four shots.
Raja, a concealed carry license holder, allegedly shot Fox three times — twice in the chest and once in the left leg, prosecutors said.
The witness rushed in and applied pressure to Fox’s wounds until an ambulance picked him up and rushed Fox, of Bellwood, to Stroger Hospital where he died, prosecutors said.
Fox was apparently unarmed and neither the witness nor Raja’s friend noticed anything in Fox’s hands at the time of the shooting, court records show.
Two nine millimeter shell casings were recovered on Cermak near where the Porsche had been during the shooting, officials said.
Hours after the shooting, Raja, who worked the overnight shift at O’Hare Airport, called several colleagues, including his supervisor. Raja told the supervisor they wouldn’t be seeing each other anymore because he “shot someone who rolled up on him” prosecutors said.
Raja also contacted another TSA agent, a woman he dated from September to November of 2023, two separate times on Aug. 25 and Aug. 27 to admit to killing a man, officials said.
That TSA agent was able to identify Raja as the driver in a photo before the shooting as well as his car in a photo following the shooting, authorities said.
Raja turned himself in on Sept. 4 and was released without charges a day later.
But on Nov. 14, after police conducted surveillance, Raja was arrested near his home in the 5100 block of West Catalpa Avenue, police said.
His seized phone showed he used Google to search for a criminal defense lawyer after texting several people to ask them not to contact him as he was “going dark,” prosecutors said.