A Chicago man who killed his half-sister’s longtime boyfriend while on electronic monitoring for a separate shooting case has been sentenced to 58 years in prison.
Judge Nicholas Kantas found 35-year-old Kevin Bennett guilty of murder and unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon during a bench trial in July. He imposed the sentence last week at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse.
Prosecutors said Bennett was living on electronic monitoring at his mother’s home in Woodlawn in August 2022 while awaiting trial for a 2020 shooting. Around that time, Bennett’s half-sister and her 29-year-old boyfriend, who had been together for seven years, moved into the same house.
Prosecutors said Bennett was openly hostile toward the boyfriend and repeatedly told his mother and half-sister that he wanted to kill him. Six days after the couple moved in, Bennett waited in the dark dining room for them to return home from a birthday party, according to prosecutors.
When they arrived, Bennett allegedly confronted the victim, called him a “b**** a** n*****,” and told him he probably thought Bennett would not do anything to him. From about five feet away, Bennett shot the man once in the chest, killing him, prosecutors said.
Bennett’s half-sister fled to a bedroom with her mother and locked the door, but Bennett kicked it open, threatened to kill her, and racked his gun as if it had jammed, prosecutors said. He then allegedly threw the gun out a window into an abandoned house next door and fled the scene.
Police later recovered the gun inside that abandoned home along with a cat belonging to Bennett’s mother. Investigators found a shell casing in the animal’s mouth, which was collected as evidence.
Bennett’s ankle monitor was found more than six miles from the shooting scene. Officers arrested him the following day under a viaduct in Hyde Park.
Bennett had been on electronic monitoring for a November 2020 case in which he was accused of shooting a 29-year-old woman in the 6900 block of South Clyde Avenue. Prosecutors have dropped that case and an escape charge.
Judge Kantas sentenced Bennett to 55 years in prison for murder, which must be served in full under Illinois law, and an additional three years for unlawful possession of a weapon. He must serve half of the latter term consecutively.
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