Eugene McLaurin didn’t kill anyone the day he opened fire on federal agents who hoped to slip away from West Pullman in their unmarked car in July 2021.
But the three survivors believed they’d been given a “death sentence.” That McLaurin had set out “to kill us all.” One said he was “terrified that the next bullet would be the one that ended my life” as McLaurin unleashed his attack over the Interstate 57 on-ramp used for their escape.
U.S. District Judge Manish Shah agreed Wednesday it was “astonishing” that no one died in the violent, unprovoked ambush. The judge told McLaurin “being willing and able to do it makes you murderous” — and then he handed McLaurin a 27-year prison sentence.
“You didn’t kill anyone that day,” Shah told McLaurin, 31. “But you were willing to.”
McLaurin opened fire with a Glock 9mm pistol at the two special agents and one task force officer working for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on July 7, 2021. The attack left one of the victims feeling like “a fish stuck in a small fishbowl with a predator attacking and nowhere to escape.”
One agent described looking down and seeing her hand was “blown open, spilling blood,” while the other recalled hearing the first agent “scream in pain.”
McLaurin had “hunted them down … like prey,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jared Jodrey told the judge in a recent court memo.
“I didn’t know if any of us were going to make it home to our families that day,” the task force officer said in a written statement.
It all happened ahead of a visit to the Chicago area by President Joe Biden, who wound up discussing the shooting with then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot on the tarmac at O’Hare International Airport.
Shah announced McLaurin’s sentence Wednesday at the end of an emotional hearing that lasted nearly two hours in a courtroom packed with law enforcement officials. The judge heard from all three of McLaurin’s victims. Christopher Amon, Chicago’s ATF special agent in charge, attended the hearing. So did Kristen de Tineo, who held the job at the time of the shooting.
Jodrey asked for a 35-year sentence, but the judge said McLaurin’s punishment should also reflect credit for his decision to plead guilty last December.
Before Shah handed down his ruling, the three victims recalled their horror, shared the extent of their injuries and explained how the attack continues to affect their daily lives. They did so in letters and comments to the judge.
The task force officer told Shah violence in Chicago “has reached levels I could have never imagined.”
“It seems that the city has lost its humanity,” he said, adding “there is no fear of any consequences for pulling the trigger.”
McLaurin did not speak to the judge before learning his sentence. Rather, defense attorney Michael Baker read a handwritten letter from McLaurin. In it, McLaurin wrote that “anything I say today can never equate to the fear, the pain and suffering” that the agents and task force officer “continue to live with.”
“This event wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t caught up in living a criminal lifestyle,” McLaurin wrote. “They were simply doing [their] job and didn’t deserve to be put in a life-threatening situation.”
The agents and officer targeted by McLaurin had been helping install surveillance equipment in West Pullman the morning of the shooting. McLaurin spotted them as they traveled in an unmarked white Chrysler but believed the car contained members of a rival street gang — or “opps.”
So McLaurin began to follow them in a white Chevrolet Malibu — and trailed them for nearly two miles, according to Jodrey.
The agents realized they were being followed but thought they’d be safe once they got on the expressway, Jodrey wrote. When they reached the on-ramp for I-57 near 119th Street, though, McLaurin pulled parallel on Ashland Avenue, rolled down his window and opened fire.
Bullets ripped through the Chrysler’s gas cap, front passenger window and rear passenger door, striking the front passenger seat, records show. One agent was shot in the left hand, the other was shot on the right side of his body, and the task force officer suffered an injury to his head.
Still, the task force officer managed to continue driving the car onto the expressway in order to escape McLaurin.
“I felt a sharp pain on the right side of my head, felt blood pouring down my neck, and saw blood on my hand,” the task force officer wrote in a statement ahead of the hearing. “Not knowing the extent of any of our injuries, I didn’t know if any of us were going to make it home to our families that day.”
One of the agents wrote, “The pain was unbearable. I was terrified. Looking up, I saw that my other partner’s head was now bleeding. I feared the worst. It was a nightmare.” The other wrote, “I did not want this to be the last moment in my life. I did not want to leave my loved ones behind without saying goodbye, but I was not sure we would survive.”
Before the shooting, the team had taken down and relayed the license plate of McLaurin’s Malibu to another team of ATF agents, a move that later helped track him down.
McLaurin wound up dropping the pistol into a sewer and hiding the key to the Malibu in a basement dryer-vent tube. However, two spent shell casings were spotted on the Malibu’s windshield when it was later found parked in front of his house.
They matched the color and caliber of the shell casings at the scene of the shooting, Jodrey wrote.
