GUILTY IL - Officer Alejandro Valadez, 27, shot to death, Chicago, 1 June 2009

Growing up in a gang-infested section of Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, Alejandro “Alex” Valadez felt the impact street violence left – the bullet hole in his living room window, blood on the sidewalk and, deepest of all, the murder of his oldest brother by a gang leader out for revenge.

It was for those reasons that Valadez, just 3 when his oldest brother Rogelio was slain, had decided he wanted to become a Chicago police officer by the time he was in kindergarten, his sister Brenda Valadez, tearfully recounted Wednesday in court.

But his own life was cut short in 2009 – just three months before his first child was born – when Valadez, 27, was killed while investigating a report of shots fired in Englewood, a violent district he’d transferred to in hopes of making a difference.

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Two of three men convicted in the 2009 shooting death of Chicago Police Officer Alejandro Valadez received the maximum sentences in their cases.

Convicted cop killers Christopher Harris and Kevin Walker were sentenced to 105 and 125 years, respectively, in the Officer Valadez's murder...

Gaston, the gunman, is serving a 125-year sentence.

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