A concealed carry holder in Chicago who was forced to defend himself when he was shot at during an attempt to steal his car saw his attackers sentenced to prison on Thursday, almost two years after he sent the two men to the hospital.
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The armed citizen was walking to his car one evening in December 2022 when he spotted a man trying to get into the vehicle. As he approached, someone started shooting at him from inside a nearby Jeep.
Drawing his gun, the man returned fire. The Jeep sped away, nearly hitting the concealed carry holder, who fired several more rounds. As the Jeep disappeared into the night, a second individual hopped out of the armed citizen’s car and ran away.
Ordinarily, the two suspects would have had pretty good odds of getting away. In 2023, Chicago police made an arrest in less than 3% of vehicle thefts, even though the city had the highest number of reported thefts in more than two decades.
In this case, however, police were able to take the two men into custody after they showed up at different hospitals seeking treatment for their gunshot wounds.
Shortly after the gunfire, surveillance cameras at Northwestern Memorial Hospital allegedly recorded Deangelo Webb tossing two items from the red Jeep as he arrived at the hospital emergency entrance. Webb had a gunshot wound to his knee, and the two items he threw were loaded ammunition magazines, prosecutors claimed.
Meanwhile, CPD and CTA surveillance cameras recorded Sebon Grisby “running, limping, and grabbing his rear end” as he fled from the shooting scene, prosecutor Sarah Dale-Schmidt said.
He entered a Red Line station before returning to street level and proceeding to Wabash Avenue, where he ran up to a car and informed two women that he had been shot.
Grisby “lowered his pants and showed the women his rear end, and one of the women recorded this interaction on her cellphone,” Dale-Schmidt said. But Grisby left before the fire department arrived.
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Grisby later showed up at a local hospital for treatment, where he was taken into custody by police.
Almost two years after the incident, Webb and Grisby took a plea deal offered by Cook County prosecutors, and learned their fate on Thursday. Unbelievably, after Webb pled guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and Grisby admitted guilty on a single charge of burglary, the judge sentenced both men to just four years in prison.
Those are pretty light sentences to begin with, but as CWB Chicago reports, the pair will probably be home for Christmas in just a few weeks.
Their sentences will be reduced to two years for good behavior and reduced further by 698 credit days earned while awaiting trial. Both men should be paroled in about a month.
Illinois’ soft-on-crime policies strike again. This wasn’t just a simple stolen car case. Webb, at the very least, should have been charged with attempted murder, and any plea deal that was offered should have recognized the violent nature of the crime.
While Webb and Grisby have been sentenced, it’s hard to say that justice has been done. I hope the victim is satisfied with the terms of the plea deal, but I’m sure the defendants are thrilled at the slap on the wrist they received for nearly killing a man who interrupted their attempt to steal his car.
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