Former high school football star gets 28 years in prison for deadly police-chase car crash

SHARE Former high school football star gets 28 years in prison for deadly police-chase car crash

Timothy Jones had a football scholarship at the Missouri-based Lincoln University and a loving family — opportunities and circumstances many kids in Chicago “dream and beg for.”

But the 22-year-old threw his future away when he robbed an acquaintance and led Chicago Police on a high-speed chase, causing them to crash and kill a motorist, a Cook County judge said Friday.

“All those dreams, ambitions, a decent life flushed down the drain for what? An iPad? An iPhone?” Judge Thaddeus Wilson said before sentencing Jones to 28 years in prison for Jacqueline Reynolds’ murder.

While Reynolds’ childhood friend blamed Gresham District officers for the May 8, 2013 incident, Wilson stressed to Jones that he initiated the deadly chain of events.

Jones, whose ankles were chained, apologized to 56-year-old Reynolds’ family and asked the judge for leniency.

“I didn’t mean for her [Reynolds ] to die that day. . . . It was a car accident and I don’t feel like my life should be lost for that,” Jones said.

His eyes brimming with tears, Jones covered his head with his tan Cook County Jail shirt when his mother testified about how she had him move in with her sister on the South Side because she didn’t want him to deal with the problems in her own rough West Side neighborhood.

“It’s like his life took a stop,” Aline Jones said of her son’s thwarted plans.

“It just seems like a f—— waste.”

Although Aline Jones said Timothy never got in trouble, prosecutors begged to differ.

They called on sheriff’s deputies and other law enforcement officials to testify about Timothy Jones’ “angry and aggressive” behavior in jail and his prior arrests for riding on the hood of a moving car and armed robbery.

Though Timothy Jones was not convicted in the latter case, he tried escaping a moving vehicle transporting him and other inmates in east-central Illinois by opening the back door and jumping out, according to court testimony.

Timothy Jones “spit in the face” of every opportunity that he’s been given, Assistant State’s Attorney Barbara Bailey said of the former Simeon Career Academy star athlete.

Judge Wilson agreed and called Timothy Jones a “horrible citizen.”

“You’re a smart guy, but a dumb crook,” he said. “You continued to up the ante.”

Timothy Jones put everybody’s life in jeopardy when he sped through the streets and tried to elude officers after stealing the electronics, Air Jordan gym shoes and $93 from a man he vaguely knew in high school, Bailey said.

Perhaps the most powerful moments in the three-hour plus sentencing hearing Friday came when Reynolds’ close friend took the stand and came to Timothy Jones’ defense.

Timothy Jones was wrong, but the officers were irresponsible when they went after him and slammed into Reynolds at 76th Street and Yates Boulevard, Lavonia Noble-King said.

Noble-King said Reynolds, a woman she knew since she was 12, would have been upset if she had known Timothy Jones was used as “a sacrificial lamb.”

“I understand they [police] didn’t mean to kill my friend, but they killed my friend, not Timothy,” Noble-King said.

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