Chicago drug dealer gets 35 years for shooting federal informant

A Chicago drug dealer has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for shooting a federal informant in west suburban Oak Park in 2014.

Kelsey Jones, 40, was convicted earlier this year of conspiring with his younger brother in the attempted murder of an informant, as well as gun and drug charges, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Beginning in December 2013, the informant worked with the U.S. ATF in a sting operation targeting 39-year-old Toby Jones, who sold crack cocaine and heroin on the West Side and in the western suburbs, prosecutors said. At one point, Toby Jones had arranged to buy a gun with a high-capacity magazine from an undercover ATF agent in exchange for drugs.

When Toby Jones sent one of his dealers to make the exchange on March 26, 2014, the dealer was arrested, prosecutors said. He then tried to shoot the informant who helped set up the meeting on two separate occasions.

In the first shooting, Jones fired several shots through the front door of an apartment in the informant’s building in Oak Park, prosecutors said. The informant was not injured, but another person was wounded.

The second shooting happened a week later when Kelsey Jones went up to the informant’s car, and shot him and another person in the vehicle, prosecutors said. Both victims survived.

Judge Amy St. Eve sentenced Kelsey Jones to 35 years in prison Monday, prosecutors said. She also found he obstructed justice at a 2015 suppression hearing in a failed effort to prevent the jury from hearing about admissions he made to ATF agents after his arrest.

Toby Jones was sentenced in May to 40 years in prison, prosecutors said.

Wesley Fields, the dealer whom Toby Jones sent to buy the gun, pleaded guilty last year to participating in a drug conspiracy and possessing a firearm, prosecutors said. Fields, of Chicago, was sentenced in May to nine years and nine months in prison.