Logan Square to ATF: "Gunfighter" vs. Chicago Violence

An ABC7 I-Team Investigation

ByChuck Goudie and Christine Tressel WLS logo
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Logan Square to ATF: 'Gunfighter' vs. Chicago violence
The I-Team spent a day with Chicago's new ATF special-agent-in-charge. Chuck Goudie with the backstory on a woman leading Chicago's war against illegal guns.

CHICAGO (WLS) -- When Celinez Nunez was 8 years old, something happened that would determine her future.

Her teenage cousin was murdered by Chicago gangbangers.

"One day I'm going to be a cop. I'm going to go out there and arrest these people," Nunez recalled of that fateful day. "I remember my family being devastated. I remember sitting in the funeral home just watching my grandma my mom and my aunts completely devastated."

Now, 33 years later, the Logan Square native is a cop with quite a mission. She is leading the federal gun enforcement effort in Chicago, as special agent in charge of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms field office.

By way of Seattle, San Juan and Washington, D.C., Nunez returned to her hometown earlier this year to take the top position at the ATF.

She met the I-Team in her old neighborhood to talk about the events that shaped her.

Then they went to the secret strike force office in Chicago where agents are focused on turning off the flow of illegal guns into the city.

Nunez said she will be able to size up her efforts at the end of her first year.

"The way I will measure my success is how many guns we recover and how many violent offenders we put away," she said.

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