A man was acquitted of first-degree murder Wednesday in a 2020 case where he’d been accused of fatally stabbing a man outside Richard’s Bar in West Town.
Thomas Tansey, 32, was found not guilty on all counts on Wednesday and released, according to Cook County court documents.
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Tansey was charged in the Feb. 21, 2020, killing of Kenneth Paterimos, 23, who bled to death after — according to prosecutors — Tansey stabbed him with a box cutter several times during a bar fight.
Tansey and his lawyers said his actions were in self-defense.
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In March 2020, prosecutors said Paterimos had been at the bar celebrating with his brother and friends when he and Tansey began fighting. “(Tansey) was severely intoxicated and was bumping into people inside the bar,” prosecutors said in a court document. He and Paterimos started punching each other, and both fell to the floor, according to the document.
Tansey left the bar and Paterimos followed, and the pair continued fighting outside. Prosecutors said Tansey pulled out a box cutter and stabbed Paterimos in the back of the head, right ear, middle back, right collarbone and right arm.
The last wound severed an artery and caused Paterimos to bleed to death, officials said at the time.
Weeks after Tansey was charged in the fatal stabbing, a judge granted him bail, ordering that Tansey be fitted with an ankle monitor and that he comply with special conditions.
Tansey served in the Marine Corps for five years and was deployed in Afghanistan as a military vehicle operator from 2012 to 2013, a Marine spokesperson told the Tribune in 2020. He rose to the rank of corporal before being discharged in 2013, the spokesperson said.
