Peoria man gets 18 years in August shooting

PEORIA — A Peoria man was sentenced Friday to 18 years in prison for shooting another man at the Lexington Hills Apartments last summer.

DaeJohn Wilson, 19, told Peoria County Circuit Judge Kevin Lyons that he was sorry but that he was provoked Aug. 8 when at the apartment complex and shot someone in the hip and in the arm.

A Peoria County jury found Wilson guilty in November of aggravated battery and unlawful possession of a firearm. He faced up to 30 years in prison.

Defense attorney Gary Morris pushed for a lesser sentence, noting his client had been bullied as a child, a statement backed up by tearful testimony from Wilson’s mother, and that his client had little in the way of a criminal record. Wilson’s mother said her son was bullied and picked on by others.

And while she admitted he needed to be punished, the woman said it wasn’t right for him to be locked up for “half his life.”

Lyons noted Wilson was carrying a gun that day and while the victim, he said, might not have been an angel, Wilson still had the gun and pulled the trigger.

“Why do people carry guns? So they can pull the trigger, and that is what happened here,” the judge said, before discussing Wilson’s problems at school, where he had been suspended because of disciplinary issues.

Wilson shot the victim at about 12:10 p.m. in the 3400 block of West Oakcrest Drive and then fled into a nearby building. He turned himself in to police later that day.

He must serve at least 85 percent of his sentence.