A Rantoul man who tried to shoot a friend and instead wounded a teenage girl in a house nearby has been convicted of attempted first-degree murder and aggravated battery with a gun.
A jury on Thursday, however, acquitted Michael Sanders, 55, who lived in the 1300 block of Cheryl Drive, of a third charge of aggravated discharge of a firearm after just over four hours of deliberation.
The mixed verdicts suggest the jury believed Sanders was present with two other shooters but couldn’t be certain who fired which of about two dozen shots fired from three guns.
Judge Randy Rosenbaum set sentencing for Sanders for June 5. He faces 21 to 45 years in prison for the attempted murder, and it’s likely that the six- to 30-year sentence he receives for shooting the teen will have to be served after that.
Before the trial began, Sanders told the judge he had rejected a plea agreement that would have capped his sentencing recommendation at 15 years in prison and dismissed two other cases in which he was charged with attempted murder of the same man on a different date and possession of a controlled substance.
Assistant State’s Attorney Justin Umlah said he won’t be trying those other cases in light of Thursday’s verdicts.
On Wednesday, the 56-year-old man who was the victim of the attempted murder was called by Umlah to testify about what happened to him on Oct. 18, 2021.
Almost immediately, the man let the judge and jury know he did not want to be testifying against Sanders, not only because he considered him a friend but because he said cooperating with police is not considered acceptable in his community.
“I love Mike. It’s hard for me. I love the man, his kids, his family. I don’t want him to be in jail for the rest of his life,” the man said before Umlah redirected him to the night of the shooting.
The man said he went to Sanders’ home on Cheryl Drive to pick up money that Sanders owed him. He said two other men — Rory Nelson and William Gray of Rantoul are awaiting trial on the same charges — came out of the house with guns.
The man asked Sanders what was going on and Sanders instructed him to come back in 15 minutes and that he would have his money then.
Returning about 9:45 p.m., the man was driving north on Gleason Drive and starting to turn west onto Cheryl when he saw Sanders and the other two men in Sanders’ driveway on Cheryl.
“Him and Ro (Nelson) fired at me … over 30 rounds maybe,” he testified, saying that he fled the area and quickly contacted Rantoul police, showing them three bullet holes in his sport utility vehicle. He was not hit by gunfire.
Minutes later, police were called to a house in the 1400 block of Gleason Drive — just east of Sanders’ home — where they found a 16-year-old girl bleeding from a hole torn in her left forearm by a bullet.
Police later determined the shot came from outside, pierced her bedroom wall, entered her arm and was deposited on her bedroom floor. Although she did not testify, jurors saw photographs of her injured arm and the teen sitting in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor.
Canvassing the neighborhood, police found 20 casings from three different caliber guns in Sanders’ driveway on Cheryl.
The man who was shot at also testified that on Nov. 29, about six weeks after the Rantoul shooting, he was driving on North Prospect Avenue in Champaign with Sanders’ wife and son when he saw a vehicle come up beside him near Bloomington Road.
He said Sanders was in the passenger side and fired a gun at his vehicle. He reported the incident to Champaign police, who found four .40-caliber shell casings on the I-74 overpass.
The Illinois State Crime Lab later determined those casings came from the same gun that fired the five .40-caliber casings found in Sanders’ driveway the month before.
As he was being cross-examined by Assistant Public Defender Janie Miller-Jones, the man put his head in his hands and declared “I just want this to be over. I don’t feel too good.”
The start of testimony had been delayed from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday morning because the man had to go to the hospital for chest pains.
“I don’t want to pursue this no more,” he said, answering several subsequent Miller-Jones questions with “I don’t remember.”
After a brief recess and a reminder from Rosenbaum that he was under oath, the man returned to the stand and answered questions put to him.
Other testimony came from Rantoul police officers who retrieved evidence from Sanders’ driveway, a car in the driveway, Sanders’ home, and the house on Gleason Drive where the teen had been shot.
In addition to the bullet that went through her arm, Officer Edgar Garcia said he found a projectile lodged in the living room wall. The shots in the house came from a 9 mm gun and a .40-caliber gun, Garcia said, and the girl had been wounded with the 9 mm.
In the driveway of Sanders’ home on Cheryl, Garcia found 13 casings from a 9 mm gun at the end of the driveway, five .22-caliber casings in the middle of the driveway, and five .40-caliber casings in the upper part of the driveway.
Another officer searched a white car in the driveway that had a gunshot to it and inside the car found a backpack that contained two .40-caliber bullets. A search of Sanders’ home turned up three different kinds of ammunition and mail addressed to him there.
In Sanders’ defense, Miller-Jones had her office’s former investigator testify about examining the Rantoul crime scene a year to the day and after the shooting. Steve Guess said the area was poorly lit and that he was unable to identify people in Sanders’ driveway from the intersection where the man who was shot at said he saw the shooters.
Sanders’ daughter also testified that her father had told her that sometime between 5 and 7 p.m. on the day of the Rantoul shooting that he was going to Chicago.
In rebuttal evidence, Umlah had a cellphone expert testify that Sanders’ phone was communicating with a cellphone tower in Rantoul, just west of the shooting scene, between 9 and 10 p.m. Oct. 18, 2021. Sanders had told police he was in Chicago all day.
On Nov. 29, 2021, the day the man said he was shot at while Sanders’ wife was with him, Sanders’ phone was in the area of northwest Champaign, and called his wife’s phone just after the shooting.
In closing arguments, Umlah told the jury that no matter who fired the shots that hit the man’s car or the teen, the men were equally guilty of the crimes. As for the multiple shots fired, he argued there was “no reason they did that other than to kill somebody.”
Miller-Jones countered that there were plenty of inconsistencies in the statements to police made by the man who said he was shot at and that it was unlikely that he could actually see the shooters from where he was.
She said the state had not proven that Sanders was the person who was actually firing and that the alleged victim has “all sorts of reasons to assume that’s who he saw.”