Crime & Safety

Murdered Man's Sister Stabbed Alleged Killer's Lineup Photo

A Joliet teen charged with murdering two and wounding a third faced the sister of one of the dead men in court.

By Joseph Hosey

When a Joliet police detective showed a young woman a photo lineup and asked her to pick out her brother's killer, she put a pen through a picture of Sjolante Crowder.

Crowder, 19, allegedly killed two men and wounded another in a cowardly ambush shooting on Second Avenue.

The men killed in the shooting—Delasse Lanier, 18, and Adrian Knox, 17—and the wounded man, 19-year-old Jordan Caples, were standing in a crowd when Crowder allegedly slunk up behind them and opened fire at close range.

Lanier and Knox were pronounced dead at Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox soon after the shooting. Caples, who took a bullet to his upper back, drove himself to Provena St. Joseph Medical Center and survived.

Lanier's sister, Addie Lanier, picked Crowder out of a six-picture lineup while at Silver Cross Hospital, said Detective Tom Ponce.

Ponce said Addie Lanier grabbed a pen from his hand and stabbed Crowder's picture, knocking it to the floor.

When Ponce first encountered Addie Lanier at the scene of the shooting, she was "crying, hysterical, very upset," he said. Later, at the hospital, she was "more calm."

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