Shooting suspect arrested: Local parolee gets caught in Chicago

CHICAGO – A Chicago man arrested Friday by U.S. marshals soon will be in Whiteside County to answer to charges that he shot an acquaintance several times on July 1.

Clarence O. Hopkins was arrested on a $1 million warrant for attempted murder and armed violence in the shooting of 23-year-old Shaevon M. Collins.

He also is wanted on an Illinois Department of Corrections warrant for a parole violation.

Whiteside County Sheriff Kelly Wilhelmi said Saturday that Hopkins could be brought to the county today or Tuesday.

Marshals tracked Hopkins to an apartment building in Chicago on Friday afternoon, Sterling Police Lt. Doug Fargher said.

When officers came to arrest him, Hopkins tried to jump out of a second-story window, Fargher said.

Fargher said he didn’t know why Hopkins was at the apartment or how he got there.

Sterling Police were called around 12:20 a.m. July 1 to East Fifth Street and Seventh Avenue.

Collins told police he was walking down the sidewalk when he heard someone approach him from behind. He and the shooter, whom he identified as Hopkins, struggled with the gun and he was shot several times in the thighs, he said.

A stray bullet went through a window of a nearby house and almost hit the homeowner, who was on a couch in the living room, police said.

Police have said that there was “bad blood” between Collins and Hopkins over a woman.

Hopkins was paroled March 8 after serving less than a year of a 2-year sentence for shooting and wounding two people in Dixon.

He also was sentenced to 2 years in prison in 2008 for possession of a controlled substance in Lee County, and has multiple other convictions in Lee and Whiteside counties dating back to 2001.

Collins, who was released from a Rockford hospital earlier this month, has five outstanding warrants in Rockford and in DuPage, Lee, and Whiteside counties.