Parent-coach dispute ends in felony charge
A South Elgin High School parent was charged with shoving his son’s football coach before a game Saturday, officials said.
James Slobodnik, 52, of the 1200 block of Churchill Road in Bartlett, was charged with aggravated battery — a class 3 felony — and misdemeanor battery following the alleged dispute with Storm varsity football coach Dale Schabert.
The incident happened around 4 p.m., just before the Storm’s game against Neuqua Valley High School, said Police Sgt. Mike Doty. The coach was warming up the players on South Elgin’s practice field when Slobodnik approached him and began an argument that allegedly ended up with Slobodnik shoving Schabert, according to police reports.
School District U46 Safety Officer John Heiderscheidt said the father first had angrily approached the assistant football coach before turning on Schabert.
Doty said the battery can be considered “aggravated” because the victim was a school employee on duty. Class 3 felonies are punishable by two to five years in prison, up to $25,000 fine, and/or probation.
Doty said Slobodnik’s son normally plays for the team but Slobodnik was upset because of some “disciplinary issue” involving the son and coach Schabert.
Ballistics report contradict’s defendant’s story
A ballistics expert’s testimony Monday further undermined Christopher Vaughn’s story that he got out of his red Ford Expedition after being shot by his wife, went looking for help and didn’t return before police found his wife and three children shot to death in June 2007.
Matthew Noedel testified for prosecutors about his analysis of bullet casings found in the SUV and the glass from the shattered driver’s side window he said was piled on top of casings found on the driver’s seat.
The order in which Noedel suspects they fell — and the glass found on Vaughn’s bloody jeans — didn’t match the story jurors heard Vaughn tell police in videotaped interviews after his family’s shooting deaths.
The Vaughn family was supposed to be on its way to a Springfield water park June 14, 2007, but Vaughn told police his wife got sick and he tried to find a private place to pull over. He told investiga- tors he got out to check the rooftop luggage carrier and got back into the driver’s seat. That’s when he said he realized his wife, Kimberly, had a gun.
He said he heard a loud noise, realized his leg was bleeding, got out of the SUV and went looking for help. His attorneys contend Kimberly then shot their three children before killing herself.
But prosecutors putting Vaughn on trial in Joliet for his family’s murders have said Vaughn got out of the car, shot his 34-year-old wife and then shot his children — Abigayle, 12, Cassandra, 11, and Blake, 8. They’ve said he then got back into the car and shot himself in the left leg and wrist to make it look like Kimberly fired the gun at him.
Noedel said Vaughn was likely sitting in the driver’s seat when he was shot in the thigh, because a bullet carrying fibers matching Vaughn’s clothing was found in the driver’s side door.
However, he also showed jurors a photo of the driver’s seat that showed glass in front of, but not behind, the bullet casings that rolled toward the crease of the driver’s seat. He said that suggested the casings must have already been in the seat when the window shattered, possibly when Vaughn was shot in the left wrist, meaning the gun had already been fired by the time Vaughn was shot.
Jon Seidel and Erika Wurst