A DuPage County judge has found 37-year-old Sean Brutto guilty on four counts of home invasion and one count of aggravated discharge of a firearm into an occupied building, stemming from a January 2024 morning when prosecutors say he fired an AR-15 at a family's home on Willow Court in Itasca before chasing a homeowner through the house. Nobody was hurt, but the case has carried the weight of a near-miss ever since gunfire first broke the quiet of that residential block.
The verdict followed a three-day bench trial, according to FOX 32 Chicago, which reported that Itasca police had responded around 9:15 a.m. on January 19, 2024, to reports of a man with a gun trying to get into homes on the 800 block of Willow Court. The Daily Herald pinpointed the same block and time, reporting that officers were also responding to shots fired in the area that morning.
Prosecutors said Brutto fired two shots in the neighborhood before firing another round through a rear sliding-glass door of the Willow Court home, shattering the glass. That bullet struck a refrigerator inside, the station's report states, and Brutto then entered the home.
Confrontation Inside the House
According to prosecutors, a homeowner encountered Brutto in a second-floor hallway with the rifle after hearing a disturbance in the house. What happened next is described differently in the two accounts that have followed the case since the original incident. The Daily Herald reported that two homeowners confronted the man, who immediately surrendered the weapon to them and asked for help. The FOX 32 report, attributing the detail to prosecutors, instead says the homeowner struggled with Brutto and managed to disarm him, and that Brutto then retook the rifle while it was being passed down the stairs to another homeowner.
Brutto fled the home, per prosecutors, and police found him in the front yard of a home on the 700 block of Willow Court, still armed with the AR-15. He dropped the rifle and was taken into custody. Officers recovered the loaded AR-15 with one round in the chamber, a magazine holding 25 rounds, and a box containing 19 more rounds of ammunition in Brutto's coat, prosecutors said, as reported by the same outlet.
Schools Locked Down as a Precaution
Nearby Itasca Elementary District 10 schools were locked down as a precaution while the situation unfolded, the Daily Herald reported at the time. Nobody was injured in the incident, and a judge denied Brutto's pretrial release that January; he has remained in DuPage County jail since his arrest.
DuPage County State's Attorney Robert Berlin said the case underscores a basic expectation that was violated that morning. DuPage County State's Attorney's Office records show Berlin said everyone has the right to feel safe in their own home, and that the victims' sense of security was shattered when Brutto shot out a sliding glass door, entered the home and headed toward a bedroom brandishing a weapon.
What Comes Next
Prosecutors say Brutto now faces 26 to 50 years in prison at sentencing, with his next court appearance scheduled for December 16. DuPage County has pursued lengthy sentences in other home-invasion cases in recent years, though those cases involved separate facts and defendants. In one, the second of two men charged in break-ins in Wheaton and Lombard and the shooting of a homeowner in August 2020 was sentenced to 72 years, according to the state's attorney's office. In another, a Chicago man accused of breaking into a Naperville home in August 2022 was sentenced to 20 years, the office has said.
