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Convicted sex offender sentenced Judge orders 28 years for prisoner who admitted to new allegations By CHELSEA McDOUGALL cmcdougall@shawmedia.com WOODSTOCK – A Huntley man, already serving time on a 2012 sex crime conviction, was sentenced Monday to an additional 28 years behind bars. Jimmy J. Dill, 42, admitted to new allegations that he had sexual contact with an underage female family member. Dill pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal sexual assault as his victims – both from his earlier case and present one – watched.
Untested Ebola vaccine may be working
The women were teens when authorities said Dill sexually abused them. In 2012, he was convicted of touching the breasts of a 16-year-old girl who was friends with his daughter. For that, he was sentenced to five years in prison. In the most recent allegations, a female family member accused Dill of having sexual contact with her in December 2009. Assistant State’s Attorney David Metnick has said that the second girl came forward with allegations after Dill was sentenced to prison. The Northwest Herald does
not identify victims of sexual assault. Upon seeing Dill shackled at the hands and feet, and escorted from a holding cell with officers from the Department of Corrections, one of the girls ran crying from the courtroom. She was followed closely by a Huntley police officer and a state’s attorney’s office victim witness coordinator. The girl eventually returned to the courtroom and wept openly during the proceeding. Dill was sentenced to 14 years on each charge. His sentences will be served consecu-
tively and at 85 percent, meaning he’d be eligible for parole in about 23 years. He must register as a sex offender. He received one year short of the maximum sentence allowable on Class 1 felonies. A remaining eight felony charges were dropped in exchange for his guilty plea, which was accepted by McHenry County Judge Gordon Graham. Dill’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Kim Messer, asked the judge to recommend that he serve his sentence in Graham Correctional Center,
a facility that’s closer to the family that visits him. Graham agreed, but said he has no control over where the Department of Corrections places Dill. As part of the 2012 plea deal, prosecutors agreed to drop drug and child pornography charges. The drug charges stem from an incident where Dill was believed to have sold Ritalin to a teenage girl. At the time, Judge Joseph Condon said Dill used his daughter as bait for her adolescent friends – a practice the judge called “despicable.”
Jimmy J. Dill has admitted to new allegations that he had sexual contact with an underage female.
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PATROLLING THE FOX
Stricken U.S. aid workers improving By MARILYNN MARCHIONE The Associated Press Two American aid workers infected with Ebola are getting an experimental drug so novel it has never been tested for safety in humans and was only identified as a potential treatment earlier this year, thanks to a long-standing research program by the U.S. government and the military. The workVoice your eWr sr, i tNeabn oc yl opinion and Dr. Kent Brantly, are How improving, concerned are although it’s you about a impossible to know whether widespread the treatment Ebola outis the reason break in the United States? or they are recovering on Vote online at their own, as NWHerald. others who com. have survived Ebola have Inside done. Brantly is being treatDeath toll ed at a special from Ebola in isolation unit W. Africa hits at Atlanta’s 887. PAGE B3 Emory University Hospital, and Writebol was expected to be flown there Tuesday in the same specially equipped plane that brought Brantly. They were infected while working in Liberia, one of four West African nations dealing with the world’s largest Ebola outbreak. On Monday, the World Health Organization said the death toll had increased from 729 to 887 deaths in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria, and that more than 1,600 people have been infected. In a worrisome development, the Nigerian Health Minister said a doctor who
Photos by Kyle Grillot – kgrillot@shawmedia.com
Marine Unit Deputy Mike Scarry calls in to a dispatcher June 5 before leaving for a patrol along the Fox River in McHenry. Boat safety, life vests, lights and intoxication on weekends are the most common among issues the marine unit faces while on patrol.
County sheriff’s marine unit sees calmer waters in recent years By JEFF ENGELHARDT jengelhardt@shawmedia.com
Marine Unit Deputy Dave Shafer (left) pulls in a bumper after performing a safety check on a boat June 5 while on patrol along the Fox River. According to Shafer, McHenry County is lucky to have less issues with intoxication and recklessness compared to neighboring counties.
Joe Marvin has patrolled the Fox River for six years, but in the past three there has been less to see. Boat traffic on the Fox River in McHenry County is poised to fall for a third consecutive year and might fail to reach double digits. Boat traffic was measured at 12,925 boats in 2011; 11,244 in 2012; and 10,070 last year. The boating numbers are tracked as boats that go through the Stratton-Bolger Lock and Dam in McHenry, meaning the totals could include repeat visitors. As of Monday, Marvin said traffic this season has been considerably low at 3,760 boats. “The traffic on the waterway has certainly been down over the
last year and has been somewhat on a downswing for the last several years,” said Marvin, commander of the McHenry County Sheriff Marine Unit. “But the last couple weekends have had pretty nice weather, so it should get busier.” The McHenry County Sheriff Marine Unit consists of 16 officers and five boats that patrol the river from mid-May through the end of October. Its jurisdiction stretches from the Algonquin Dam north to the middle of Pistakee Lake before jurisdiction turns over to Lake County, where the more active portion of the Chain O’ Lakes is located, Marvin said. Patrolling shifts generally run eight hours and can require as few as two of the two-men boats or all five during the busiest times.
See PATROLLING, page A4
See EBOLA, page A4
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Dillard resigns
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GOP state senator to lead the regional transit authority / B2
Airfare has gone up 10.7 percent in five years – after adjusting for inflation / B5
Harvard packaging company recalls 432 pounds of meat / A3
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