Rock Falls man sent to prison for 10 years in 2021 shooting

MORRISON – A Rock Falls man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for a 2021 shooting that injured another man and damaged a Rock Falls home.

Alexander Vinson-Ishmon, 24, pleaded guilty Wednesday, May 28, to one count each of using a stolen firearm and reckless discharge of a firearm. He was sentenced to seven years in prison on the stolen firearm charge, and when he completes that sentence, he will serve three years in prison for the reckless discharge count.

Charges of aggravated battery and aggravated discharge of a firearm – the two charges originally filed against Vinson-Ishmon in 2021 – were dismissed as part of a plea deal. The trial information with those two charges was amended May 27 to add the two charges to which he pleaded guilty the next day. Vinson-Ishmon was given credit for 499 days served.

The sentence for using a stolen firearm will be served concurrently with a seven-year prison sentence for a related case in Lee County. In that case, Vinson-Ishmon pleaded guilty in November 2023 to felony possession of a stolen firearm and was sentenced in January 2024. One count each of armed violence, delivery of cannabis, possessing a firearm without a valid firearm owner’s identification card, illegal possession of ammunition and possession of cannabis were dismissed as part of a plea agreement.

The case

According to the Whiteside County charging document, the events began to unfold shortly before 6:30 a.m. March 21, 2021, when a Rock Falls police officer was driving in the 600 block of West Second Street and saw a man who appeared to be trying to break into a home.

The officer went to the house and, although the man was gone, she noted damage to two windows and a door. She also found a phone lying on the ground nearby, according to the document.

Vinson-Ishmon lived at the residence, according to the document.

About 7:30 a.m. the same day, Rock Falls police officers responded to the 300 block of Sixth Avenue, where they found evidence of a shooting in the alley between Sixth and Seventh avenues and a home struck by at least one bullet, according to the document.

About that same time, a 21-year-old man who lived in the area and had been shot – and whose phone was the one found next to the home with the broken windows and door – walked into the police department to report the incident. He was taken to CGH Medical Center for the treatment of superficial gunshot wounds, according to the document.

Rock Falls police then issued an arrest warrant for Vinson-Ishmon for aggravated discharge of a firearm in connection with the man’s wounds. Vinson-Ishmon was taken into custody in Dixon three days after the shooting.

According to a Dixon Police Department news release issued at the time, Dixon police received information from the Rock Falls Police Department that Vinson-Ishmon was wanted on a valid arrest warrant regarding the Rock Falls shooting.

Dixon officers checked numerous locations in Dixon and subsequently found Vinson-Ishmon’s vehicle at a residence in the 800 block of East Graham Street, police said.

About 4:40 p.m. March 24, 2021, surveillance officers observed Vinson-Ishmon exit a residence in the 800 block of East Graham Street and enter a vehicle parked at that location. Police conducted a traffic stop on the vehicle in the 800 block of East Graham Street, and Vinson-Ishmon was taken into custody without incident.

During a search of the vehicle, officers found a loaded handgun, a large amount of U.S. currency and cannabis, according to the release. A check of the firearm’s serial number revealed that the firearm was reported stolen from a residence in Lee County in early 2020.

Vinson-Ishmon was turned over to the Lee County Jail. It is the plea deal in this case that landed him the seven-year sentence to be served concurrently with the Whiteside County seven-year prison sentence.

The plea deal accepted Wednesday comes a little over two months after Whiteside County Circuit Court Judge James Heuerman rejected an earlier proposed plea deal in the case.

Under that agreement, Vinson-Ishmon was ready to plead guilty to one count of aggravated battery with a firearm, which would have sent him to prison for up to six years and would be served concurrently with his sentence for the Lee County weapons case.

However, Heuerman refused to accept the terms of the plea agreement in the Rock Falls case based on the danger that the fired shots posed to others in the area at the time. Heuerman said that he would not accept that agreement because although the victim’s wounds were superficial, gunfire that damaged the door of a nearby house indicated that others had faced danger and a risk of injury.