$20 million bail set for teen accused of killing three and wounding one in Bolingbrook home invasion
Throughout Monday, cars slowed as they passed a Bolingbrook home where a scrap of police tape hung from a fence and a latex glove left on the lawn offered clues to the tragedy that had struck inside the night before.
Police moved quickly to detain a 17-year-old suspect and clear the horrifying scene, but as word spread of the triple homicide that killed a man and two girls in the quiet suburban neighborhood Sunday night, neighbors and family shared their shock and devastation.
On Monday evening, Bolingbrook police Chief Mike Rompa announced charges against Byrion Montgomery, 17, of the 200 block of Waterman Drive in Bolingbrook. Montgomery, police said, had been in a dating relationship with one of the dead girls, who police identified as Samiya Shelton-Tillman, 17.
He pleaded not guilty in Will County court Tuesday morning.
The two others shot and killed include another girl, not yet named, and 40-year-old Cartez Daniels, police spokesperson Anthony Columbus said Monday afternoon. A fourth victim, a 34-year-old woman, was hospitalized with gunshot wounds, police said.
Reed Silva said the stepson she lost was a smart man working hard to live right. Daniels had been a carpenter, she said as she fought back tears.
“He could do anything, mathematically. He loved his family. He loved everybody. He tried to do anything he could for anybody,” Silva said. “He was making life better for him and his kids and his family.”
Montgomery was charged with nine counts of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, home invasion, aggravated battery with a firearm and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. His bail was set at $20 million.
“All indications implicate him as the sole offender,” Rompa said in announcing the charges. “It has been determined that Montgomery was in a dating relationship with the 17-year-old victim.”
Officers responded to reports of a home invasion in the 100 block of Lee Lane around 8:15 p.m. Sunday. Two boys, ages 3 and 14, were also inside the home at the time of the shooting, but were physically unharmed, Columbus said.
Officers detained Montgomery near his home at 10 p.m. Sunday, police said.
Valley View School District 365U Superintendent Rachel Kinder confirmed that two of the victims were students in the district.
“The VVSD community is shocked and saddened by the loss of two of our students,” Kinder said in a statement. “We have reached out to the families involved to express our condolences and to offer our support as they experience this devastating loss. In addition, we have initiated the District Crisis Response Plan to support our school communities and families that have been greatly impacted by this senseless act of violence.”
As neighbors woke up to the news Monday, the home looked like any other: a football by the front wall, a shovel near the front door, a spare tire, a lawn mower and a stroller in the backyard.
Next door, a neighbor said he had heard what he thought were fireworks, maybe five or six of them, the night of the shooting. Directly across the street, neighbor Melinda Taylor recalled hearing a loud thud late Sunday before first responders arrived. She thought her neighbors might have been moving something, she said.
But then an ambulance passed. She went to her living room window and saw police working a crime scene.
Taylor’s own son plays basketball with the teen boy who lives in the home at a nearby cul-de-sac “all the time,” she said. She was thinking about the child Monday morning.
“I was just shocked and devastated,” she said. “It really just broke my heart.”
Many elderly people and a few families live in the “very quiet” neighborhood, Taylor said. In the 24 years she has lived in her Bolingbrook home, nothing like this has ever happened, she said. She had never had any concerns, she added.
The family that lives in the home where the shooting occurred never stuck out, she said. She sometimes chatted with the mother as their sons played, she added.
“They just came and go and went to work, like everybody else,” Taylor said.
Neighbor David Townsend said he moved into another home across the street a year ago. Nine years in the Marine Corps had made him vigilant and aware of his surroundings, he said, but he was nonetheless shocked Monday. He had never expected anything like this to happen in his suburb, he said.
Microphones affixed to his home for security didn’t pick up the sound of any gunshots the night before, he added. He remembered the boy in the home across the street and his friends playing basketball nearby.
