{"id":121459,"date":"2025-08-05T17:44:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T17:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/121459\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T17:44:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T17:44:16","slug":"a-la-salle-county-record-shaw-local","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/121459\/","title":{"rendered":"A La Salle County record? \u2013 Shaw Local"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seven people in the La Salle County<\/a> Jail are facing murder charges. <\/p>\n

Has the county ever had that many pending murder cases at once?<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin a span of 20 months, we\u2019ve had seven people charged with murder,\u201d said Joe Navarro, La Salle County state\u2019s attorney since 2022 as well as from 1988-96. \u201cThat\u2019s definitely unprecedented.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Within a span of 20 months, we\u2019ve had seven people charged with murder. That\u2019s definitely unprecedented.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Joe Navarro, La Salle County state’s attorney<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shaw Media contacted past and present La Salle County prosecutors, including some who had served as far back as 1980. None could remember any comparable surge in murder cases. Seven murders reported throughout a four-year term might have been plausible \u2013 but never within a 20-month span.<\/p>\n

Brian Towne spent 25 years in the prosecutor\u2019s office in Ottawa, with 15 years spent as an assistant and 10 years spent as state\u2019s attorney. The most murders he said he remembered pending at once was three.<\/p>\n

That was in 2007, when Towne was busy with James Alvarado and Randall Jennings after an elderly couple were fatally bludgeoned in Seneca. Keith Mackowiak was charged with their murders. All three remain in prison.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember hoping that wasn\u2019t a change for the worse,\u201d Towne said. \u201cI was hoping we weren\u2019t headed towards an uptick or a total that would rival the Collar Counties. That was a unique challenge \u2013 we had our hands full with three, so hats off to the current administration for dealing with seven.\u201d<\/p>\n

The county reached its current record in July when Tyler Skerett was arrested after a manhunt began Easter Sunday after shots were fired into a vehicle in Streator<\/a>, striking two men and killing a teen.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors expressed concern over the mounting level of violence and bloodshed over the past two years.<\/p>\n

The trend appears to have begun in May 2023 when Malcolm Whitfield fired at three people<\/a>, injuring two and fatally striking Shaquita Kelly. Jurors rejected Whitfield\u2019s self-defense claim and convicted him of murder. His sentencing is set for Oct. 3.<\/p>\n

Trial dates are pending for Nicolaus Phillips and Chastity Furar, both of whom were charged with murder following the 2023 fatal shooting of Eric Clements<\/a> in Ottawa<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Logan Petre<\/a> awaits an intermittent bench trial in connection with the strangulation death of his father, Leo Petre, on Father\u2019s Day weekend in Marseilles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Three new cases have been filed in 2025: On March 4, Joshua Casey<\/a> has been considered a suspect in the strangulation death of Jessica Balma. Police still were looking for Skerett when two people were shot in rural Sheridan, leading to the arrest of Ronald Martin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s going on? Navarro and other law enforcement chiefs express three broad concerns.<\/p>\n

Guns and drugs<\/p>\n

Petre and Casey are charged with murder by strangulation, but five other individuals are charged with murder by firearm. Of those five, only Furar was lawfully permitted to own a gun. The other suspects are prohibited from possessing or owning a firearm.<\/p>\n

Navarro called for lawmakers to revisit the laws regarding felony possession of a weapon by a felon and to pass more stringent penalties, both to deter felons from acquiring guns and to incarcerate those who would misuse them.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I\u2019m pro-Second Amendment,\u201d Navarro said. \u201cBut I think, as I said before, the legislature needs to pass the laws that make unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon more than just a Class 4 felony. It\u2019s ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another common thread among the pending cases is drugs. Although Navarro is barred by Illinois Supreme Court rules from discussing pending cases in detail, he said that the purchase or exchange of drugs was a flashpoint or at least a contributing factor in most of the pending cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the common theme,\u201d Navarro said. \u201cIf drugs weren\u2019t present at the scene, I believe, based on what we know of the cases, the shootings were motivated by drug deals.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Tri-County Drug Enforcement Narcotics Team said that a growing prevalence of firearms in drug transactions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does not come as a surprise to our unit,\u201d Trident said in a statement. \u201cOver the last few years, there has definitely been an increase in guns located during drug seizures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police shortage<\/p>\n

More police officers have been recruited since 2020, a time when a variety of factors heralded a lack thereof. Navarro said Streator is grappling with one such shortage, accounting for three of the pending murder cases in La Salle County.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly, it\u2019s no fault of the (Streator) police force,\u201d Navarro said. \u201cThe fact of the matter is, as I\u2019ve told an open session with the mayor and city manager, they need more officers. They\u2019re woefully short in officers, especially trained investigators, to go ahead and process these crime scenes. It\u2019s very important that the people of Streator continue to insist upon their government getting some more boots on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Streator Police Chief John Franklin disputed that characterization of the city\u2019s force, however.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Streator Police Department has hired eight officers since my arrival here, just one month shy of three years ago. The city hired three officers within the past 20 months. All are patrolling our city\u2019s streets, making a difference every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Franklin added that the force has two \u201cwell-trained\u201d full-time investigators and. He said that although some crime scenes have demanded outside resources, a lack of officers is not the problem. Streator\u2019s current roster of 22 sworn officers is its most populated since 2010.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of our homicides that have occurred here in Streator since my arrival appear to be retaliatory in nature,\u201d Franklin said. \u201cI assure you, having more officers would very likely not have prevented those crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"There<\/p>\n

There are seven pending murder cases in La Salle County and state’s attorney Joe Navarro said that’s “definitely” a record. Navarro maintains a board of the county’s most urgent cases and the roster, seen here Friday, Aug. 1, 2025, is unusually full. By Navarro’s count, seven people have been charged with first-degree murder in the past 20 months. (Scott Anderson)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seven people in the La Salle County Jail are facing murder charges. Has the county ever had that…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":121460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2961,75388,75389,224,5337,75390,75391],"class_list":{"0":"post-121459","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-la-salle-county","12":"tag-la-salle-county-court","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-losangeles","15":"tag-newstribune","16":"tag-shaw-local-front-headlines"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114977404600654071","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}