A Vernon Hills man has been sentenced to 32 years in prison for a 2021 Thanksgiving weekend fatal shooting in the parking lot at Gurnee Mills mall.
Joey Gonzalez, 27, was handed the prison term Friday in Lake County Court for the shooting death of Jonathan Denicolas, a Zion resident who was 26 when he was killed on Nov. 27, 2021. Gonzalez had been found guilty last summer of second-degree murder and weapons charges.
He and another man, Jesse Zumaya, were charged with shooting Denicolas in a parking lot on the northeast side of the mall on the Saturday of the holiday weekend, when the mall was packed with Christmas shoppers, authorities said.
At the time, police described the shooting as targeted, though Gonzalez argued at trial he was acting in self-defense.
Prosecutors argued that Gonzalez deserved a lengthy sentence because he previously had been convicted for accidentally shooting a friend to death in 2017. He pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to four years in prison in that case.
In the Gurnee Mills shooting, Gonzalez faced a term of 10 to 45 years in prison. He was sentenced by Judge D. Christopher Lombardo.
Zumaya is awaiting trial on second-degree murder and weapons charges.
