A 26-year-old Louisville, Kentucky man has been sentenced to 18 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections for opening fire in the parking lot of Lombard's Yorktown Center during a busy holiday weekend in November 2022, wounding a woman in the arm. Ronald Grundy pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated battery with a firearm, a Class X felony, for his role in the shooting near the mall's JCPenney lot.
DuPage County State's Attorney Robert Berlin announced the sentence, which was handed down by Judge Margaret O'Connell, according to the DuPage County State's Attorney's Office. Berlin had previously said that Grundy opening fire in a crowded shopping center parking lot at 3 p.m. during a three-day holiday weekend showed an utter disregard for public safety, a comment his office made public shortly after the November 2022 arrests.
Authorities say Grundy and co-defendant Jakobi Kinsey confronted two male victims and one female victim at the mall on Nov. 11, 2022, with one of the defendants allegedly asking the group, “You good?” before the confrontation escalated. Grundy, allegedly wearing a ski mask, is accused of firing multiple shots from the passenger-side window of a vehicle at the victims before he and Kinsey fled the scene. The female victim was struck in the arm by a bullet.
Victims Sought Help at Downers Grove Hospital
The wounded trio drove themselves to Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove in a Ford Escape, where law enforcement first made contact with them, according to Illinois Courts records. The female victim underwent emergency surgery at the hospital to remove the bullet from her arm and has since recovered from her injury. Officers recovered five spent 9mm casings at the scene, per the DuPage County State's Attorney's Office.
Lombard police responded to the report of shots fired near the JCPenney parking lot and had cleared the scene by 6:40 p.m. that same day after determining there was no active threat to the community, according to FOX 32 Chicago. The mall was allowed to stay open even as mallgoers reported seeing vehicles speeding out of the parking lot in a panic.
Arrests Followed a Multi-County Search
Investigators tracked the two suspects across county lines within days of the shooting. Lombard police took Kinsey into custody at a Chicago address on Nov. 12, 2022, two days before authorities arrested Grundy at an address in Cook County on Nov. 14, 2022. Kinsey, now 27, is from the 3200 block of West Douglas Boulevard in Chicago and faces one count of aggravated battery with a firearm along with three counts of aggravated discharge of a firearm, a Class 1 felony.
The DuPage County court granted the state's petition to deny Grundy bail on Nov. 15, 2022, and Judge John Kinsella upheld that denial, while Kinsey's bond was set at $1 million by Judge Brian Telander. But the legal landscape shifted in January 2024, when the Illinois Appellate Court Third District reversed a DuPage County circuit court order that had denied Kinsey pretrial release, ruling under the state's Pretrial Fairness Act that the trial court abused its discretion in detaining him under updated statutory standards.
What Comes Next for the Co-Defendant
Kinsey's case remains pending, with his next court appearance scheduled for Sept. 1, 2026, before Judge O'Connell. As with any pending case, the government bears the burden of proving Kinsey's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and the complaint against him contains only charges rather than proof of guilt — he is presumed innocent unless and until proven otherwise.
Grundy's 18-year sentence carries steep practical consequences under Illinois law. Because aggravated battery with a firearm is a Class X felony, state statute 730 ILCS 5/3-6-3 requires him to serve at least 85 percent of his term, limiting good-conduct credit to no more than 4.5 days per month, according to the Illinois General Assembly. That truth-in-sentencing provision means Grundy must serve roughly 15.3 years before he becomes eligible for parole. Berlin thanked assistant state's attorneys Katharine Walker and Nicole Wilkes-English for their work on the prosecution.
A Mall Already Under Financial Strain
The shooting adds to a string of high-profile incidents at Yorktown Center, which opened in 1968 as the largest shopping mall in the United States and today spans roughly 1.2 to 1.4 million square feet anchored by Von Maur and JCPenney, according to Pacific Retail Capital Partners. In February 2025, two men from Columbus, Ohio were arrested and charged after allegedly breaking into the mall after hours and stealing $137,000 worth of jewelry, a case Hoodline previously reported.
The mall's owners are also grappling with financial trouble. Yorktown Center's ownership defaulted on a $107.4 million loan last month, even as local officials and developers pressed forward with plans to add more than 1,200 residential units around the shopping center as part of an effort to reposition the decades-old retail hub into a walkable, mixed-use destination.
