Urbana man acquitted in 2022 shooting on I-74

Jul. 14—URBANA — A Champaign County jury Friday acquitted an Urbana man of shooting another man in a car on an area interstate about 16 months ago.

Divontae Bailey, 21, who listed an address in the 500 block of G.H. Baker Drive, had been charged with attempted murder and aggravated battery with a firearm for shooting David Rodgers on March 26, 2022, about 2 a.m. on Interstate 74 east of Prospect Avenue in Champaign.

Rodgers' car had at least 15 bullets fired into it. He testified that only minutes earlier he left the Mach 1 gas station, 902 W. Bloomington Road, after a group of men taunted and threatened him as he stood inside at an ATM machine. Rodgers said he was apparently their target because they were enemies of his late cousin, murdered in Champaign three months earlier.

Rodgers was shot in the chest, arm, legs and both hands. Losing control, the car crashed into the median, which resulted in the female passenger sustaining a broken back, ribs and nose.

Public Defender Lis Pollock argued vehemently that Bailey had no connection to Rodgers and that the state had not proven that Bailey was in the car from which the shots were fired. She also pointed out what she saw as omissions in the Illinois State Police investigation of the shooting.

Rodgers and his passenger had testified that shots came at them from both the front and back seats of the passing car, which was driven by Anthony Blake Young, 23.

He's now serving a 23-year prison sentence pleading guilty, through accountability, to the attempted murder of Rodgers.

Bailey was linked to the crime by a gun found March 29, 2022, on an apartment balcony at 401 E. University Ave., C. That building was just north of an alley where police had arrested Bailey for an unrelated crime on the night of March 27, 2022.

One state crime lab analyst said the gun magazine had a mix of DNA, some of which came from Bailey, while a second analyst said the 13 shell casings found on I-74 the morning the car was shot up came from that gun.

Assistant State's Attorney Joel Fletcher said those facts, a statement that Young gave to police implicating Bailey in the shooting — which Young recanted Wednesday as he testified — and a police investigator's identification of Bailey as one of the men who was at the gas station getting into the offending car, amounted to "ample evidence" of his guilt.

Further, he argued, Bailey was arrested by Champaign police less than 48 hours after the interstate shooting after he fled from them as they investigated a call of several armed men leaving the Oakwood Trace apartments on North Third Street. Fletcher argued that as he fled, Bailey tossed the gun used in the interstate shooting onto a second-floor balcony on University Avenue.

Bailey was found just south of that building with a different loaded gun on him. Near him was another man who had also been identified as being at the gas station on March 26.

The gun which had fired the shell casings found on I-74 was located on the balcony.

Pollock countered that all that evidence was not proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Bailey was in the car when the shots were fired.

"He'll have other consequences for having a gun he shouldn't have," she said of the gun found on him, reminding the jurors that was not the case they were trying.

She also mocked the identification of Bailey by State Police Investigator Aaron Carr.

Carr had compared the size and gait of a masked man seen on video from the Mach 1 station March 26 to what he saw of Bailey during an approximate two-minute interview at the county jail two days later then concluded that the masked man who got in the shooters' car was Bailey.

"That crack ID by the trooper was so inherently ridiculous, I can't believe the state put it on," argued Pollock, describing Carr's investigation as "crap."

She also noted that Carr only wrote up his report of that identification 14 months after having made it, when Fletcher asked him to document it.

"When you realize how weak your case is, you look for other things to bring up," argued Pollock.

Before the trial began, Bailey told the judge he had declined Fletcher's offer to plead guilty to attempted murder and have two other felony cases dismissed for a sentence of 30 years in prison.

He remains in the county jail on those. In one, he's accused of armed violence and other weapons offenses for allegedly having a gun on March 27, 2022. In the other from August 2021, he is charged with aggravated fleeing from police.

He's due back in court on July 26.

Also charged with shooting at Rodgers is Elijah Smith, 21, of Champaign, who is set to be tried Aug. 7.