By Jeremy Gorner

Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — Surveillance video footage captured a gunfight involving an off-duty Cook County sheriff’s deputy and another man outside a West Town bar nearly three years ago.

The roughly 5 1/2-minute video, obtained by the Tribune, showed how the shooting unfolded, an incident that led to a 10-year prison sentence earlier this week for one of the suspects involved.

In the video, which has no sound, one of the attackers waves a handgun outside the Funky Buddha Lounge, 728 W. Grand Ave., during the early hours of Nov. 30, 2014, prompting several other people to scatter. The gunman can be seen in the footage opening fire into the air.

Michael Raines, the off-duty sheriff’s deputy who was down the street from the bar during the commotion, rushes toward the suspect with his own gun drawn, the video shows. During the encounter, Raines shoots the suspect, who then runs to the sidewalk in front of the bar, clutching himself where he was injured, the video shows.

Raines then rushes again toward the now-wounded man and grabs him when a second man walks toward them with a gun, according to the video. Holding his gun to the wounded suspect's head, Raines crouches to the ground with that man and uses him as a human shield, the video shows.

Raines, continuing to keep the wounded suspect in front of him, ducks when the second man points his gun at him, the video shows. The wounded man is also shown on the video trying to push Raines's right arm away as the deputy points his gun with his right hand toward the other man.

That man is eventually shown on the video entering and exiting a parked car outside the bar before running away from the scene.

Shortly after that, about 4 minutes and 40 seconds into the video, Chicago police squad cars arrive at the scene with their blue emergency lights flashing. Raines remains on the ground waving his gun in the air in an apparent effort get the responding officers' attention.

The man who fled the scene, Mario Orta, was arrested the next day on the West Side. While it's not immediately clear in the video whether Orta fired his gun, authorities have said he opened fire on Raines during the confrontation.

Orta, now 30, pled guilty on Monday to aggravated discharge of a firearm and was sentenced to 10 years in prison by Cook County Judge Joseph Claps, court records show. Orta received credit for the 967 days he spent awaiting trial in the Cook County Jail, the records show.

His wounded co-defendant, Fernando Lopez, now 29, is still awaiting trial on charges of attempted murder, aggravated discharge of a firearm and aggravated assault of a peace officer. He is currently out on bail and is due to appear in court again next month.

About 2:50 a.m. on the morning of the shooting, according to the account from authorities, Raines spotted Lopez waving a gun in a crowd during a fight outside the bar. Lopez fired, Raines approached and told him to drop the gun, authorities said.

Lopez instead pointed it at Raines who then shot him, authorities said.

Lopez dropped the gun and Orta picked it up and pointed it at Raines, according to prosecutors. Orta fired at the deputy, telling Raines to let him take Lopez away, Cook County prosecutors said at the time the two were charged. Lopez was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for treatment.

The sheriff's department's Office of Professional Review conducted an internal investigation of the shooting and determined that Raines's actions were justified, according to Cara Smith, a top adviser to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.

Raines died about a year after the shooting of a drug overdose at the age of 33. His cause of death was fentanyl toxicity and his death was ruled an accident, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. News about the cause of Raines’s death was first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times in a story published last month.

Raines boarded a CTA bus just before noon on Oct. 8, 2015, according to records from the medical examiner's office. About 1 p.m., when the driver completed her route on the West Side, she found Raines unresponsive, records show. Chicago Fire Department personnel couldn't revive him.

The records show that in addition to alcohol and heroin abuse, Raines suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, insomnia and neuropathy. At the time of his death, Raines was on leave from the sheriff's department pending the outcome of the shooting investigation, records show.

The Chicago Tribune's Liam Ford contributed.

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