Gunman who killed Northwestern grad student Shane Colombo gets 60 years

A judge Tuesday handed a 60-year prison sentence to the gunman who fired a stray bullet that killed a Northwestern University graduate student who had moved to Chicago only a few hours earlier.

In September 2018, California native Shane Colombo had been set to begin a doctoral program in psychology at the Evanston campus, where he intended to pursue studies that would help with mental health treatment for minorities, the poor and others who suffered negative social stigma, his father, Ariel Colombo, said during a sentencing hearing in front of Judge Thomas Byrne.

Not long after he arrived at O’Hare Airport, Shane Colombo made a trip to buy some odds and ends for the new apartment that he and his fiance had purchased, anticipating a lengthy doctoral program and perhaps a long future in Chicago. Instead, Shane Colombo, 25, was struck by a bullet fired by Diante Speed, who fired multiple shots as he ran across a busy section of Rogers Park, chasing a man who he said brandished a weapon at him. A jury last month convicted Speed of first-degree murder.

“His life and legacy is greater than my loss. And the loss is greater than any sentence that can be given to [Speed] and bigger than the city of Chicago,” Ariel Colombo said, after summarizing some of his son’s research publications.

“My son took the bullet from perhaps the same [person] he was going to save.”

Speed’s lawyer reminded the judge of an evaluation that noted Speed’s troubled youth as the child of a disabled mother and an abusive father, and who had seen his best friend gunned down while in grade school.

Speed was 19 when the Shane Colombo shooting occurred. When asked to speak, Speed stood and faced the Colombo family in the gallery.

“Shane Colombo was an incredible person from everything I heard about him,” Speed said. “I would never try to go out and hurt somebody with these kinds of capabilities, that had a family that loves them, that has ties to colleges or community activist groups.”

Speed had been walking with two friends in the 7500 block of North Clark Street, just a few blocks from Chicago's border with Evanston and Shane Colombo’s new apartment. A third man approached Speed and, Speed said, flashed a gun. Speed drew his own gun and chased the man, firing several times; one of the bullets struck Shane Colombo.

Surveillance video showed parts of the chase, and Shane Colombo crumpling to the ground, but not Speed actually firing the weapon. The case seized headlines in 2018, but no arrest was made for nearly a year. As the investigation dragged on, Shane Colombo’s mother, Tonya, helped raise a $12,000 reward for tips. Tonya Colombo and her son's fiance, Vincent Colores-Chalmers, who both live on the West Coast, attended nearly every significant hearing in the case and have become anti-violence advocates.

“Shane dedicated his life to understanding how trauma affects communities,” Colores-Chalmers told the judge, wearing his engagement ring on a chain around his neck. ”And this tragedy exemplifies the ripple effects he studied.”