CHICAGO — A man has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for illegally possessing a handgun and participating in the murder of a man in Chicago on Labor Day weekend in 2022.
ANDREI TAYLOR illegally possessed the loaded firearm on the afternoon of Sept. 19, 2022, in the Tri-Taylor neighborhood on Chicago’s Near West Side. Taylor was a passenger in a Kia Optima that had been stolen in a carjacking earlier that afternoon. When a Chicago Police squad car approached the Kia, Taylor and three other occupants fled the vehicle and ran off on foot. Taylor tossed the gun, which had an extended magazine, into the backyard of a nearby residence before he was apprehended by police. Taylor had previously been convicted of three firearm-related felonies in the Circuit Court of Cook County and was not lawfully allowed to possess the gun.
Taylor, 27, of Chicago, pleaded guilty to a federal charge of illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp, Jr. imposed the prison sentence during a hearing Wednesday in federal court in Chicago. In addition to the illegal firearm possession, Judge Tharp found that Taylor participated culpably in the premeditated murder of Kadaivion Jones, who was fatally wounded on Sept. 2, 2022, while standing on a sidewalk in Chicago’s West Garfield Park neighborhood. The handgun illegally possessed by Taylor in the Kia was one of the guns used to shoot Jones.
The sentence was announced by Morris Pasqual, Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Christopher Amon, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Field Division of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and Larry Snelling, Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department. The government was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Elie Zenner and Simar Khera.
Holding firearm offenders accountable through federal prosecution is a centerpiece of Project Safe Neighborhoods, a nationwide initiative that brings together law enforcement officials, prosecutors, community leaders, and other stakeholders to develop comprehensive solutions to the most pressing violent crime problems in a community. In the Northern District of Illinois, the U.S. Attorney’s Office has deployed the PSN program to attack a broad range of violent crime issues facing the district, particularly firearm offenses.
