A convicted felon was sentenced on July 24 to more than two and a half years in federal prison for illegally possessing a handgun outside a Chicago fast food restaurant after being released on bond for a prior violent offense.
Jonathan Scott, 33, of Oak Park, Illinois, was arrested on May 25, 2025, after displaying a handgun during an argument with an employee at a McDonald’s restaurant on the West Side of Chicago. Police discovered the firearm in Scott’s vehicle parked outside the restaurant. Scott had multiple previous felony convictions and was legally prohibited from possessing firearms.
At the time of his arrest at McDonald’s, Scott was out on pre-trial release for another violent crime pending in state court. In that earlier case from March 2025, he forced his way into his ex-girlfriend’s car and took her cell phone, causing her injury. He was later convicted of unlawful vehicular invasion and sentenced to four years in state prison.
Scott pleaded guilty in March 2026 to unlawful possession of a firearm. U.S. District Judge Sara L. Ellis imposed a sentence of 32 months in federal prison within the advisory U.S. Sentencing Guidelines range.
The sentencing announcement came from Andrew S. Boutros, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Christopher Amon, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The investigation involved ATF’s Crime Gun Intelligence Center (CGIC) of Chicago—a centralized law enforcement partnership focused exclusively on investigating and prosecuting violent offenders who use firearms throughout northern Illinois.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephanie Stern said in the government’s sentencing memorandum, “The defendant has, between the ages of 19 and 32, racked up eleven felony convictions, including convictions for aggravated battery, violating orders of protection, escaping a penal institution, unlawful vehicular invasion, and aggravated assault and use of a deadly weapon… It is critical that the defendant’s increasingly escalating criminal conduct be halted.”