A group of Peorians received varying prison sentences this month on charges that they attempted to steal firearms from six different central Illinois gun shops.

Shaleik Ward, 20, was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison on May 9, with another partner in the scheme, 23-year-old Terrence Daniels, being sentenced to 45 months in prison, along with three years of supervised release.

A week later, Dezmond Hardy, 23, received a 21-month sentence, with 22-year-old Erika Garner being sentenced to time served, along with the three years of supervised release.

The four were charged with conspiracy to steal and possess guns from six stores in central Illinois that had federal firearms licenses. During the sentencing hearings in front of District Judge James Shadid, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of Illinois said that over a four-day span last August, varying combinations of the quartet drove to gun shops in Bloomington, Decatur, Lincoln, Taylorville, Le Roy and Spring Valley attempting to steal guns.

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While several of the businesses sustained property damage during the attempts, none of the four managed to obtain any actual weapons.

The Peoria Police Department and the Peoria Area Federal Firearms Task Force arrested the quartet on Aug. 18 as they were returning from Decatur following an attempt to burglarize a gun shop there. Court documents indicate that police executed a vehicle containment maneuver along War Memorial Drive, after which all four were taken into custody.

The four were indicted in September 2023 on the federal charges, with each of them pleading guilty to avoid a trial in January. Daniels, Ward and Hardy have each been in the custody of U.S. Marshals since the initial arrest, while Garner has been in the Peoria County Jail after her bond was revoked in November 2023 due to a violation of her conditions of release.

According to court documents, Garner had contact with two of her co-defendants at least 20 to 25 times over a two-month period in September and October 2023 and admitted as such to federal probation officers after it was discovered.

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Daniels, who received the longest of the four sentences, admitted while he pled guilty to violating the terms of supervised release from a series of separate incidents in 2019 and 2020 in which he and several others stole more than 50 guns from gun stores in five counties. As a result, on top of a 33-month sentence on conspiracy charges, he received a 12-month sentence that will be served consecutively.

Each of the four will also have to pay $2,500 in restitution for damages to at least one of the businesses. They had been facing a fine of $250,000, along with four years in prison and the three years of supervised release.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald Hanna, who prosecuted the case, praised the work that local law enforcement did to ensure that no guns got out on to the streets.

“Stolen guns are used to commit acts of violence in our communities,” Hanna said. “Our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners worked together to quickly resolve this case before any guns got into the wrong hands.”

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