Man gets 8 years for shooting tow truck driver in Elgin

A man convicted of shooting a tow truck driver in northwest suburban Elgin in 2015 has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

Kane County Circuit Judge John A. Barsanti handed down the sentence Thursday to 22-year-old Devonne L. Montgomery, according to a statement from the Kane County state’s attorney’s office. A jury found Montgomery guilty of a felony count of aggravated battery with a firearm on April 27.

The shooting happened about 1:50 a.m. on Oct. 18, 2015, in the 1200 block of Fleetwood Drive in Elgin, prosecutors said. The tow truck driver had arrived and started to remove a car that was parked illegally.

Another man approached the driver and his coworker, pulled out a set of keys and asked them not to tow the car, the state’s attorney’s office said. The driver agreed, lowered the car and unhooked it from the truck.

As the two truck driver was talking to the man, Montgomery walked up and started yelling, according to prosecutors. The driver said he wasn’t going to tow the car and told Montgomery to mind his own business, at which point Montgomery pulled out a 9 mm Beretta handgun and shot him in the shoulder.

While the driver was running to the truck to take himself to the hospital, Montgomery fired a second shot and missed, prosecutors said. The driver went to Saint Joseph Hospital, where he underwent multiple surgeries for a broken scapula, a broken clavicle and a nicked lung.

Montgomery, who lives in South Elgin, will be required to serve at least 85 percent of his eight-year sentence, the state’s attorney’s office said. He received credit for 606 days served in the Kane County Jail, where he has been held on a $250,000 bond since his arrest.