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A 17-year-old boy is in custody after Bolingbrook police discovered two girls and a man fatally shot and another adult woman wounded while responding to an apparent Sunday night home invasion.
Bolingbrook Police Chief Mike Rompa on Monday evening announced charges against Byrion Montgomery, 17, of the 200 block of Waterman Drive in Bolingbrook. Montgomery has been charged with nine counts of first degree murder, attempted first degree murder, home invasion, aggravated battery with a firearm and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. His bail was set at $20 million, of which he must post 10 %to be released.
“All indications implicate him as the sole offender,” Rompa said. “It has been determined that Montgomery was in a dating relationship with the 17-year-old victim.”
The detained boy had been in a dating relationship with one of the killed girls, who police identified as Samiya A. Shelton-Tillman, 17. The two others shot and killed include another girl not yet named and 40-year-old Cartez L. Daniels, police spokesperson Anthony Columbus said Monday afternoon.
Officers discovered the victims while responding to a home on the 100 block of Lee Lane in the southwest suburb around 8:15 p.m.
First responders transported a 34-year-old woman who was also shot to the hospital. Her condition was stable Monday. Two boys, ages 3 and 14, were also inside the home at the time of the shooting, but were unharmed, Columbus said.
Police detained the boy suspected of committing the shooting near his home at 10 p.m. Sunday and are working with the office of Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow to file formal charges, Columbus said.
“All indications are he was the sole offender,” he said.
Reed Silva, Daniels’s mother by marriage, said he was a smart man working hard to live right. Daniels was a carpenter, she said.
“He could do anything, mathematically. He loved his family. He loved everybody. He tried to do anything he could for anybody,” Silva said through tears. “He was making life better for him and his kids and his family.”
Melinda and Anthony Taylor stand outside their neighbor’s home March 6, 2023, where three people were fatally shot and another person was wounded Sunday night in the 100 block of Lee Lane in Bolingbrook. The Taylors said their son and a teen boy who lives in the home regularly play basketball together in the neighborhood. Anthony Taylor remarked that the shooting “is too close to home.” (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)
The only sign of the triple homicide left at the home Monday morning was yellow police tape still partially strung on the fence and a latex glove left on the lawn.
The rest of the dwelling looked like any other: a football by the front wall, a shovel near the front door, a spare tire, a lawn mower and a baby stroller in the backyard.
Next door, a neighbor said he heard what he had thought were fireworks, maybe five or six of them, the night of the shooting. Directly across the street, neighbor Melinda Taylor recalled hearing a loud thud late Sunday night before first responders arrived. She thought her neighbors might’ve been moving something, she said.
But then an ambulance passed. She went to her living room window and saw police operating a crime scene.
Taylor’s own son plays basketball with the teen boy who lives in the home at a nearby cul-de-sac “all the time,” she said. She was thinking about the child Monday morning.
“I was just shocked and devastated,” she said. “It really just broke my heart.”
Many elderly people and a few families live in the “very quiet” neighborhood, Taylor said. In the 24 years she has lived in her Bolingbrook home, nothing like this has ever happened, she said. She had never had any concerns, she added.
The family that lives in the home where the shooting occurred never stuck out, she said. Inside, an older girl, a teen boy, a younger girl and a younger boy live with their two parents, Taylor said. She had sometimes chatted with the mother as their sons played, she added.
“They just came and go and went to work, like everybody else,” Taylor said.
Neighbor David Townsend said he moved into another home across the street a year ago. Nine years in the Marine Corps had made him vigilant and aware of his surroundings, he said, but he was nonetheless shocked Monday. He had never expected anything like this to happen in his suburb, he said.
Sensitive microphones affixed to his home for security didn’t pick up the sound of any gunshots the night before, he added. He remembered the boy in the home across street and his friends playing basketball nearby.