A 38-year-old DeKalb man who, in 2021, shot an innocent man in the face with a shotgun while on his break at a West Chicago business was sentenced to 45 years in prison yesterday.
DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin announced that Ahmad Steele of DeKalb has been sentenced to forty-five years in the Illinois Department of Corrections following a three-day trial last month. On March 21, 2025, a jury returned a guilty verdict against Steele after approximately two hours of deliberations. In all, the jury found Steele guilty of one count of Attempt First Degree Murder and one count of Aggravated Battery with a Firearm.
According to prosecutors, on January 28, 2021, at approximately 7:50pm, police officers with the West Chicago Police Department responded to Mapei Corporation on Industrial Drive for a report of a subject with a facial injury. Upon their arrival, officers discovered the victim walking around the building’s parking lot suffering from an apparent gunshot wound to his face.
Authorities immediately transported the victim to a local hospital for medical attention.
An investigation into the shooting found that the victim had been sitting in his vehicle in the parking lot during his dinner break from Mapei Corporation. At approximately 7:31pm, a Chevrolet Blazer entered the parking lot and parked several spaces away from the victim. The driver of the Chevrolet, later identified as Steele, then exited his vehicle with a shotgun and walked toward the driver’s side of the victim’s vehicle. at which point he raised the shotgun and fired, shooting the victim, whom he did not know, in the face.
After the shooting, Steele initially returned to his vehicle but then went back to the victim’s vehicle and raised the shotgun at the vehicle a second time before returning to his vehicle and fleeing the scene.
On February 6, 2021, the Naperville Police Department observed the Chevrolet Blazer suspected to be involved in the shooting driving on Route 59. Officers conducted a traffic stop on the vehicle and took the driver, later identified as Steele, into custody for driving on a revoked license. Steele was charged with Attempt First Degree Murder and Aggravated Battery with a Firearm on February 11, 2021. He has remained in custody at the DuPage County Jail since that time. The victim, who had undergone five surgeries to reconstruct his jaw, passed away from an unrelated illness in 2023.
“On a cold January evening, for no apparent reason at all, Ahmad Steele approached a man unknown to him as he sat in his car on dinner break, and shot him in the face with a shotgun,” Berlin said. “While the motive for this extremely violent, unprovoked attack may never be known, we do know the physical and emotional pain Mr. Steele inflicted on an innocent man forever changed his life. The randomness of this horrific act of violence shook an entire community to its core and we are all thankful that Mr. Steele will more than likely spend what amounts to the rest of his life behind bars, away from society, where he will be unable to harm anyone ever again.”
