Officials: Aurora man killed girlfriend in domestic dispute
Aurora police say they took Christopher Whetstone into custody Monday night about 10 minutes after he is accused of shooting and killing a woman who had been his girlfriend.
Now the Aurora man is facing a first-degree murder charge.
Whetstone, 45, of the 500 block of Charles Street, is being held on $200,000 bond after the Kane County state’s attorney’s office authorized the murder charge against him Wednesday night.
He is accused of shooting Rachel Taylor, 22, of Aurora, multiple times in the abdomen about 8:25 p.m. Monday when the two got into a domestic disagreement down the street from his home.
Police said Whetstone ran from the scene after the shooting, but witnesses helped them track the man down about 10 minutes later in the area of Plum Street and West Park Avenue.
Aurora spokesman Dan Ferrelli said Whetstone and Taylor had two children but were not living together when the argument began.
Taylor’s murder was the second of the night for Aurora police, who already had begun investigating the shooting death of 20-year-old Arin T. Williams of Aurora elsewhere in the city. Ferrelli said skilled policing and tips from witnesses helped authorities file charges in both cases by Wednesday night.
“It was excellent police work all around,” he said, “from the initial response by patrol officers to the follow-up from detectives.”
Whetstone is scheduled to appear in Kane County court at 9 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 5.
According to Kane County court records, Whetstone has a lengthy criminal history dating to at least 2000, when he was arrested in Aurora on charges of possession of drug paraphernalia.
He was sentenced to five years in prison after being arrested in Aurora in May 2002 and charged with selling cocaine within 1,000 feet of a school. He also spent time in jail for resisting arrest and has three domestic battery arrests and convictions, the most recent from December 2009, when he was sentenced to 18 months in prison, according to court records.
Ÿ Daily Herald Staff Writer Harry Hitzeman contributed to this report