Chicago man convicted of assault after fight with neighbor

 Posted on August 26, 2013 in Assault and Battery

In our last post we discussed a Chicago neighborly feud which turned violent one July evening. The feud resulted in one man being sentenced to aggravated battery and sentenced to two years of intense probation.

An appeals court recently reconsidered the case and affirmed the man's conviction. The man alleged that there was not enough evidence to support his conviction because he and his neighbor had drastically different accounts of what happened that evening.

So what happened?

The incident took place on July 13, 2009, on the 10800 block of South Homan Avenue in Chicago.

Version one of events:

According to trial documents, the neighbor, Ken, testified that he was out drinking with his girlfriend Tara. Ken said that he had "less than six drinks" and that he and Tara were not drunk when they returned home.

Upon pulling into his driveway, he noticed that his neighbor Gary was sitting on the porch next door. Gary had two friends with him, a woman and a man.

Ken testified that Gary started screaming profanities at him and Tara once they got out of the car. Ken told Tara to ignore his neighbor's shouts, and the two went inside.

Tara then went back outside in order to talk to Gary. She hoped to help mediate the drama between the two men so that they could live peacefully next to each other.

Things turned ugly a short time thereafter. We will discuss Tara's complete version of events in our next post.

Source: People v. Daniel, 2013 IL App (1st) 121120-U Aug. 14, 2013