by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News May 21, 2023

An Illinois drug dealer whose life sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama has been arrested and charged with three counts of attempted murder following a road rage incident in Chicago.

Alton Mills, 54, whose federal life sentence was commuted by Obama in 2015, faces the potential of another life sentence after officials accused him of shooting and gravely wounding a 39-year-old woman on an expressway in suburban Chicago this week.

(Update: The woman, Linda Chattman of Chicago, was shot in the head and has since died, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office said.)

In 1994, Mills received a life sentence for trafficking cocaine because it was his third felony conviction. After Obama commuted his sentence, Mills campaigned to eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing.

Shortly after receiving clemency, Mills spoke at a Senate criminal justice forum at the invitation of Illinois Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin, who said Mills was “an overlooked casualty in our ‘war on drugs.’ ”

“The life story of Chicagoan Alton Mills shows why we need to pass the #FirstStepAct,” Durbin tweeted three years after Mills’ release. “Alton, who received a pardon from President Obama in 2015, was destined to spend his life in prison. He’s now a contributing member of society. #cjreform”

Assistant State’s Attorney Kathryn Morrissey said during Mills’s bail hearing that, early Sunday morning, May 14, three friends left a nightclub in south suburban Harvey, and one of them drove the group home. As their Ford Explorer neared the ramp to I-57, the driver pulled up behind Mills’s SUV at a red light,

Mills’s vehicle didn’t move when the light turned green, so the Explorer’s driver pulled around and passed, according to Morrissey. She said Mills sped to catch up to the Explorer, pulled up next to them, and fired shots from his driver’s window.

A bullet struck a woman sleeping in the Explorer’s back seat in the head, Morrissey said. The Explorer’s front passenger told police that the shooter was an older black man with a salt and pepper beard. She also took a blurry picture of the gunman’s license plate and recorded a video in which she read the license plate number out loud.

Morrissey said that Illinois State Police investigators focused on Mills’s vehicle after reviewing license plate reader data from the area of the shooting. Police executed search warrants on his home and car. They reported finding loose 40-caliber bullets in his bedroom, the same caliber used in the shooting, and his car tested positive for gunshot residue.

Morrissey told the court that Mills “made admissions that he did the shooting.” Mills, she said, is responsible for inflicting “great bodily harm and soon death” on the victim.

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