TUSTIN : Marine Killed in Chicago Street Crime

A Tustin-based Marine who was visiting his family in Chicago was killed in what police believe may have been a bungled robbery attempt, authorities said Monday.

Cpl. Michael Sublett, 20, was shot in the head late Sunday night while he was backing his new Ford Mustang into the garage behind his parents’ home, Chicago Police Detective Cmdr. Robert Beavers said. He was pronounced dead at Roseland Hospital early Monday.

Sublett, who grew up in Chicago, had gone out to a nearby McDonald’s a short time earlier and was bringing back food for himself and his wife, Latanya Sublett, Beavers said. Neighbors reported hearing shots in the alley behind the Subletts’ home, then a car leaving the area at high speed. So far, no witnesses to the shooting have surfaced, he said.

Sublett’s mother discovered her son slumped in the car at 11:55 p.m. He had been shot at least once, Beavers said.

“Right now, we’re approaching this on an angle of a robbery that went bad,” Beavers said. “Whatever develops . . we’ll go from there.”

Sublett had just bought the blue Mustang and had planned to drive back to Tustin with his wife, Beavers said. “He had to be back in Tustin on Sept. 1, so they were going to leave today,” he said Monday.

A neighbor, Lonnie Chambers, said Sublett “was one of the best kids you could ever see. He was not a young man like the average man who is always into something. He was the kind of child who was obedient. He was one of the very few young men I know who said Mr. and Mrs.”

Sublett enlisted in the Marines on Dec. 29, 1987, according to a corps spokesman, Master Sgt. Steve Merrill. He reported to the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station in November, 1988, and most recently was assigned to Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron No. 166, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, where he worked as an avionics technician on CH-46 helicopters.

Sublett received a Humanitarian Service Medal for relief work after the 1989 Bay Area earthquake, and a Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, which acknowledges a year’s service either overseas or aboard a ship, Merrill said. He was promoted to corporal on June 1 of this year.

Sublett and his wife lived in an apartment in Tustin, Merrill said.