Downstate man gets 36 years for Gurnee shooting

Kavin Spivey was sentenced to 36 years in prison Wednesday for a crime he still insists he did not commit.

Spivey, 30, was convicted of attempted murder, armed violence and armed robbery in September for shooting at a gas station attendant who tried to stop Spivey from robbing a station customer.

Circuit Judge Fred Foreman found Spivey guilty of all the charges after a trial based primarily on the testimony of Spivey's co-defendant's in the case.

Travis Fleming, 36, and Lamar Hicks, 17, who like Spivey are from downstate St. Anne near Kankakee, said all three were traveling to Milwaukee on Nov. 30, 2007. They stopped at Gurnee Mills because Spivey said he wanted to buy a toy for his daughter, but instead Spivey led Hicks to a nearby Shell station while Fleming waited in the car.

There, Spivey grabbed a wallet out of a female customer's hands and shot twice at a station clerk who chased him. The shots missed and clerk was not injured.

Fleming and Hicks were placed on probation after they testified they had no idea Spivey was going to rob anyone or that he was carrying a gun.

Spivey again told Foreman he was not at the station, and that Hicks and Fleming had lied their way off more serious charges.

"I am not surprised they said what they said," Spivey told the judge. "I am surprised that the court believed him."

Prosecutor Ari Fisz argued for a sentence of 45 years, saying there was corroboration for the stories told by Hicks and Fleming, and Spivey had two prior convictions involving a gun. He was sentenced to six years in prison for aggravated discharge of a firearm in 1998 and received a 10-year term in 2002 for aggravated unlawful use of a firearm, Fisz said.

The current offenses are far more serious, Fisz told Foreman, and could have been even worse.

"This was as close to a cold-blooded murder as you can get," Fisz said. "And the only reason it is not is because he missed."

Defense attorney Christopher Lombardo asked Foreman to consider the testimony of Fleming and Hicks unreliable, and also to leave his client some hope.

Lombardo said the minimum sentence for his client was 26 years, and he would have to serve 85 percent of any term imposed before being paroled.

"If you give him the minimum, he will be in his 50s when he gets out of prison," Lombardo said. "If you give him the state's number, he does not get out."

Foreman rejected Spivey's claim of innocence, saying he was convinced the state had presented enough evidence to convict him.

He also said he was rejecting a minimum sentence because of the need to protect society from Spivey.