CHICAGO (CBS) — A Chicago man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison, after admitting to firing a gun into the grave of a murder victim during his burial service in 2017.
Elston Stevenson pleaded guilty Monday to one count of illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. U.S. District Judge John Tharp sentenced him to 180 months in prison.
Federal prosecutors said, during a burial service at Evergreen Cemetery in Evergreen Park on Nov. 22, 2017, Stevenson pulled out a handgun and fired a single shot into the grave of a man who had been murdered two days earlier
Prosecutors said, as he fired, Stevenson said, “You aint’ [expletive]. You got what you deserved.”
“When a felon brings a loaded gun to a populated area and uses the gun to threaten and endanger strangers, this conduct will not be tolerated,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Cornelius A. Vandenberg argued in the government’s sentencing memorandum. “The mourners were all in the immediate vicinity of the defendant when he produced the loaded weapon and were placed in danger by the defendant’s reckless firing of the weapon into the gravesite.”
At the time Stevenson was charged in 2017, police said the shooting happened at a funeral for 39-year-old Murad Talib, who was killed on Nov. 20, 2017, in his Palos Heights home. It wasn’t clear how Stevenson may have known Talib.
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