A Jacksonville man has pleaded guilty to a felony weapons charge stemming from an hours-long standoff near Jacksonville Middle School in April.
37-year old Thomas M. Loughary pleaded guilty Wednesday in Morgan County Circuit Court to possession of a weapon by a felon. He was sentenced to eight years in the Illinois Department of Corrections.
Morgan County State’s Attorney Gray Noll says that Loughary pleaded guilty prior to a pretrial setting set for next month: “His case was set to go for what’s called pretrial on November 3rd. However, his attorney contacted the court and my office and indicated the defendant was interested in pleading guilty. So the case was moved up to today [Wednesday] and the defendant entered a guilty plea this morning on one count of unlawful possession of weapon by a felon. And he was sentenced to eight years in the Illinois Department of Corrections, followed by a six-month period of mandatory supervised release, [ordered to pay] a variety of fines, fees, and costs. And as part of the plea, the firearm in question was ordered to be destroyed.”
The charges of Class 1 felony aggravated discharge of a firearm and misdemeanor domestic battery were dismissed per the plea agreement.
Loughary was arrested April 24th following a roughly 10-hour standoff that ended peacefully with his surrender. Noll says the incident involved a gun going off inside a home in the 700 block of Park Street in the early morning hours, less than a block away from Jacksonville Middle School: “There was a firearm that was discharged inside of the defendant’s home. There was a young lady present at the time. Because the defendant’s home was located in close proximity to Jacksonville Middle School, this did have repercussions on the Jacksonville Middle School day-to-day operations. It’s my recollection that they were on lockdown for a brief period of time because of this or perhaps maybe had to start late, one of those two. But the shots fired were limited to inside the residence. Nobody was hit with the firearm and nobody was really in that much danger. In fact, the young lady who was present when the firearm was discharged contacted our office and indicated that she was not interested in proceeding on any charges which involved her cooperation.”
Noll says that Loughary will have a number of programs available to aid him while he is incarcerated should he choose to use them but none were ordered by the court in the case.