Man gets 6-year prison term in local 7-Eleven robbery
BY BILL BIRD wbird@stmedianetwork.com January 17, 2013 4:53PM
Antwan Jones / Photo from DuPage County State's Attorney's office
Updated: February 19, 2013 1:54PM
The last of four young men charged in last summer’s robbery of a convenience store in Lisle was sentenced Tuesday to six years in prison for his role in a crime that left a store clerk seriously injured.
Antwan Jones Jr., 19, of Chicago’s south side, was convicted of a felony charge of robbery in the July 19 holdup of the 7-Eleven store at 4651 Old Tavern Road. Judge Blanche Hill Fawell imposed Jones’ sentence in DuPage County Circuit Court in Wheaton.
A Lisle police spokesman in July said four men entered the store, looted it and assaulted an employee before leaving. Miscellaneous pieces of merchandise were stolen during the robbery, and no weapons were used, the spokesman said.
Jones, before leaving, viciously kicked the 58-year-old store clerk. The clerk was hospitalized following the attack and reportedly has not returned to work.
Police later that evening arrested Jones and associates Antonio M. Finley, 21, of Lisle; Steven V. Gayden, 18, of Aurora; and Deshaun Wilson, 17, of Lisle.
Fawell presided over all of the men’s cases. She sentenced Gayden in September to four years in prison; Finley a month later to a six-year prison term; and Wilson in December to six years in prison.
State’s Attorney Robert B. Berlin on Tuesday noted all four will be required to serve 85 percent of their sentences before being considered for parole.
Berlin said the men “brazenly robbed” the store, with Jones “brutally beating a man just trying to make an honest living.”
Jones and the others “will all spend a significant amount of time behind bars for their actions,” Berlin said in a prepared statement. He saluted police and Assistant State’s Attorney Debora Brewer for their work “in putting these dangerous men behind bars where they belong.”
Finley is a former Naperville resident with an extensive criminal record. In an incident on Feb. 26, 2011, he contacted a 25-year-old woman who had advertised her iPad for sale on Craigslist.
The woman met Finley at Crab Apple Court and River Road on Naperville’s near west side. Finley snatched the iPad from her hands and ran.
Police followed the footprints Finley left in the snow and arrested him at his mother’s home, not far from the crime scene.
