DARIEN, IL – A man involved in the burglary of a Darien home has been sentenced to 31 years in prison, prosecutors announced Friday.
Joseph Covington, 28, a former Chicago resident, has been held in the DuPage County Jail since his arrest in December 2022, according to a news release from the DuPage County District Attorney’s Office. In April, he pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated residential burglary.
The robbery occurred in the 1100 block of Belair Drive.
At around 9 a.m. on November 26, 2019, a woman in her early 20s returning home from college heard a knock on the front door, police said.
She looked out her bedroom window into the backyard and saw a person wearing an orange work vest and a black ski mask, the news release said.
When she turned around in her bedroom, she was confronted by another person wearing dark clothing and a black ski mask, pointing a black and silver handgun at her, prosecutors said.
The man forced her downstairs at gunpoint, where she was confronted by three other masked men. The men, one of whom was later identified as Covington, demanded to know where the money was in the house.
After several calls from the woman’s mother went unanswered, the masked men told the victim to answer the call and tell her everything was OK, prosecutors said.
After the conversation, the mother contacted a neighbor who went to the house. The victim opened the door at the intruders’ instruction, the prosecutor’s office said.
The neighbor then pulled the woman out of the house and called 911.
With the help of a sniffer dog unit, officers tracked the intruders through the backyards. They found a black and silver .40 caliber pistol with 13 rounds on a fence in a neighbor’s yard, the press release states. Along the way, they also discovered various items of clothing that served as evidence.
Officers found Covington in a nearby Taco Bell parking lot, prosecutors said. He matched the description of one of the intruders.
“I cannot even begin to imagine the unspeakable fear the victim must have felt, who was home alone from college at the time when she saw a masked man in her backyard and was then confronted by another armed, masked man in her bedroom,” DuPage County District Attorney Robert Berlin said in the press release. “Our homes are our sanctuaries, and we all have the right to feel safe and secure in our own homes. Mr. Covington not only robbed his victim and her family of the comfort and protection that home provides, but also threw an entire community into turmoil that is concerned about its own well-being.”
The press release did not comment on the status of the investigations into the other suspects.
