Lesser charge nets five-year prison term in 2008 drive-by shooting

Perry Thomas received a five-year prison sentence Tuesday for shooting a 19-year-old man in August 2008.

He could have faced decades more.

Thomas, 21, of Hoffman Estates, received the shorter term in exchange for his guilty plea to aggravated discharge of a firearm, so the state declined to prosecute the more serious charge of attempted murder.

Had prosecutors pursued that charge, a conviction could have earned Thomas as many as 55 years in prison for the drive-by shooting in the 1700 block of Queensbury Circle in Hoffman Estates.

Prosecutors indicated that the victim agreed with the sentence.

Police said Thomas, of the 1700 block of Williamsburg Drive, fired three or four shots at the 19-year-old male victim from the driver's seat of a car he was driving, wounding the man in the leg and hip.

Prosecutors indicated previously that Thomas and the victim knew each other but did not elaborate how.

A 2007 Hoffman Estates High School graduate, Thomas had no criminal history before the shooting, said his attorney Anderson J. Ward.

Describing the situation as "difficult," Ward called the resolution "a successful outcome for everybody."