By Lauren Fitzpatrick
Chicago Sun-Times
CHICAGO — Life in prison is what a 49-year-old parolee from Joliet deserved, a Cook County judge decided Thursday, for killing a 79-year-old man on Christmas Eve 2009 as the man was loading chicken into his car to take to a family holiday feast he was hosting with his wife of 54 years.
Judge James B. Linn called the victim, retired state employee and civil rights activist Ralph Elliott, “not only a gentleman but a gentle man.”
Then the judge blasted Lee Cration as he handed down the sentence, calling the parolee a danger and a menace and telling him, “This court has no mercy for you. You will never have an opportunity to hurt an honest person again.”
Cration had been out of prison for a little more than a year for a 1985 murder conviction when he shot Elliott outside Popeye’s Chicken, 818 E. 47th St., on the afternoon of Dec. 24, 2009.
A jury convicted Cration of the murder in September after watching video surveillance of the shooting.
Assistant State’s Attorney Barbara Dawkins argued for a life sentence, saying Elliott never stood a chance.
“The defendant cornered Ralph Elliott and ambushed him, shooting him twice. The first shot rendered Ralph Elliott motionless. He never had a chance to hand over the money,” Dawkins said.
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