Jan. 6 defendant kills woman in drunken highway crash
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Samael — 11 months ago(May 07, 2025 05:30 PM)
Jan. 6 defendant kills woman in drunken highway crash
David Harris
May 1st, 2025, 12:08 pm
A jury has convicted a Jan. 6 defendant for killing a 35-year-old woman in a drunken wrong-way crash on an Illinois highway.
Shane Jason Woods, 47, was previously convicted of assaulting a press photographer and police at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 before receiving a pardon from President Donald Trump. On Wednesday, the Illinois jury found Woods guilty of reckless homicide, aggravated driving under the influence and aggravated fleeing and eluding.
Woods, apparently upset after an argument and then facing a decade in prison for his role in the Jan. 6 riot, got behind the wheel on Nov. 8, 2022, after leaving a bar. He then sped away from a traffic stop before crashing head-on into the car driven by Lauren Wegner, killing her.
The now-convicted felon took the stand on his own defense on Wednesday, according to a courtroom report from the Sun-Times. He spoke of how his involvement in the Capitol riot weighed on him and how he was “national news.”
“Millions and millions of people hated me,” he reportedly testified.
Woods said that as his marriage fell apart in 2019 and 2020, he began to closely follow politics. Asked if he was an “ardent” supporter of Trump, he reportedly said he was “an ardent supporter of Americans.”
Wegner’s parents wore her ashes is necklaces around their necks and held them as the verdict was read, per the Sun-Times. Her father told the newspaper afterward that he and his wife were “not totally happy with the verdict. But we can’t argue with the verdict.”
Woods’ attorneys had argued for the lesser verdict and his supporters quietly applauded in approval when the verdict was read, the Sun-Times reported.
On Tuesday, a police officer reportedly testified that when he pulled a speeding Woods over, the defendant told him he wanted to “end it.”
“‘It takes a big f—ing man to say what I’m about to say'” the officer reportedly recalled Woods saying. “‘I’m gonna kill myself'”
A former cop whose relative was dating Woods at the time saw him and also stopped. He could be heard on dashcam footage telling another officer that Woods was “involved in that Capitol deal.”
But Woods fled from the traffic stop, and sped north down the southbound lanes of I-55. Wegner happened to be driving south on the highway and collided head-on with Woods’ pickup truck. A fiery ball erupted after impact, instantly killing Wegner and breaking nearly every bone in her body, prosecutors reportedly said. Investigators had to identify her through her nail polish.
“Lauren died because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Prosecutor Derek Dion reportedly said during his opening statement. “And she couldn’t get out of the way.”
“How this vile, disgusting, and immoral behavior has become normalized… is something our descendants will study.” -
WarrenPeace — 11 months ago(May 07, 2025 06:18 PM)
I’m confused by why the father of the victim is not happy with the verdict and supporters of the scum turd are?
They found him guilty, shouldn’t it be the other way around?
And how could he have fled after being stopped?
Aren’t the police supposed to make sure that doesn’t happen?
And did he collide with the victim from being drunk and as a suicide attempt or just one of those?
Whoever wrote this left out some details.
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