Man guilty of 2015 Elgin murder, faces up to 85 years prison
After about 3½ hours of deliberations, a Kane County jury convicted William M. Ingram of gunning down a 20-year-old man in April 2015 in an apartment complex parking lot on Elgin's west side.
Ingram, 32, formerly of the 0-99 block of Poplar Creek Drive, Elgin, was charged in October 2015 with the first-degree murder of Devonte Turner, 20, also of Elgin.
Ingram now faces a sentence of 20 to 60 years in prison, plus an additional 25 years because jurors concluded he fired the fatal shot, when sentenced by Kane County Judge Charles Petersen on Nov. 15.
During a three-day trial in Kane County this week, prosecutors argued Ingram sought revenge for a shooting he was involved in earlier in the month and targeted Turner, who also had a twin brother.
The night of April 30, 2015, Turner and a friend were running errands on the 1200 block of Fleetwood Drive in the Buena Vista apartment complex, also called "The Mills," when Ingram ran up behind an SUV and fired seven shots from a .40-caliber handgun into the vehicle, according to prosecutors.
Two bullets hit Turner and he died a short time later.
In his closing argument Wednesday afternoon, Kane County Assistant State's Attorney Greg Sams dissected a grainy surveillance video from the parking lot that showed a man in a gray hoodie run up behind the SUV, pause and then run away. Sams argued the man was Ingram, and the area he ran to was where the shooting occurred and police found spent shell casings.
Authorities later found a .40-caliber handgun in an awning above Ingram's girlfriend's apartment, which was in the same complex. Ballistic tests tied the gun to the fatal shooting.
Sams said Ingram lied to police when he was questioned, repeatedly saying "There's no video of me running up behind nobody," when in fact there was.
"That man, William Ingram, committed first-degree murder, then lied about it and now he must pay," Sams said.
Kane County Assistant Public Defender Britt Hawkins argued the gun did not have Ingram's fingerprints or DNA on it and that he ran that night because he thought he was being shot at.
Hawkins said a man who testified he had a "FaceTime" conversation with Ingram after the shooting in which Ingram said "I got that (guy)" had reason to make up a story because he was facing prison time.
Ingram also is serving a 15-year prison term after his conviction in 2017 for selling cocaine near a school in 2014.