SPRINGFIELD — A “hailstorm of grief and unadulterated rage” has been brewing for nearly three years, ever since a drunken downstate man drove his GMC Sierra the wrong way onto Interstate 55, killing 35-year-old Lauren Wegner of Skokie.
That storm finally erupted Tuesday. It hit moments before Sangamon County Judge Ryan Cadagin sentenced Shane Jason Woods to 17 years in prison for the crimes that led to Wegner’s November 2022 death. They were committed in a failed suicide bid by Woods, who was distraught over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riot.
The judge first gave Wegner’s parents and close friend a chance to speak. Bill and Evelyn Wegner called their daughter “beautiful both inside and out.” Meghan O’Dea called her friend a “north star” who changed lives — and might have even saved Woods, if given the chance.
But Woods didn’t “deserve to know someone so special,” O’Dea added.
“This is what evil looks like,” she told the judge, facing Woods in the well of a Sangamon County courtroom.
“You saw what he did to her,” O’Dea pleaded. “Lauren had to be identified by the color of her nail polish.”
O’Dea said she’d felt the “hailstorm of grief and unadulterated rage” ever since the crash, and she urged the judge not to show any mercy.
But Woods also had a chance to speak. Before his conviction last spring, Woods testified that he believed “millions and millions of people” hated him for his role in the Jan. 6 riot. He said that’s why he drove his truck the wrong way onto Interstate 55.
On Tuesday, rather than face the judge, Woods turned in his seat toward the Wegners, O’Dea and their supporters. He thanked them for sharing stories about Lauren Wegner and wearing shirts featuring her photograph. He claimed he never knew what she looked like.
“That night,” he told them, “I took the sadness, the despair, the hopelessness and guilt, multiplied it by 1,000 and gave it to your family.”
Cadagin then went along with a sentencing agreement worked out by prosecutors and Woods’ defense attorneys, Mark Wykoff and Daniel Fultz. A jury in April rejected a first-degree murder charge leveled against Woods but found him guilty of aggravated driving under the influence and other crimes.
His 17-year sentence consists of 14 years for the aggravated DUI and three years for fleeing a traffic stop before the crash.
The 47-year-old Woods must serve 85% of the 14 year sentence and 50% of the three-year sentence. He’ll get credit for roughly 1,000 days already served. That puts him on track for release around early 2036, when he’d be 58.
But this all comes after President Donald Trump issued a sweeping pardon for nearly everyone convicted for their role in the Jan. 6 riot — the very prosecution that led to Lauren Wegner’s death, according to Woods.
Federal authorities leveled Jan. 6 charges against Woods in June 2021, trumpeting that he was the first person arrested for assaulting a member of the media during the riot. Woods eventually admitted that he’d assaulted a U.S. Capitol police officer and cameraman.
Lauren Wegner’s death occurred two months after Woods’ admission. Woods testified at trial that he’d already tried to kill himself twice by November 2022. The first time, a friend pulled a gun out of his hand. The second, his girlfriend cut a rope.
Then, on Nov. 8, 2022, Woods said he’d gotten into a fight with his girlfriend. A Divernon police officer later spotted Woods’ truck barreling north on I-55, so he pulled Woods over near Springfield’s southern border.
Woods allegedly told the officer, “it takes a big f–ing man to say what I’m about to say: I’m gonna kill myself.”
Then, Woods peeled away and drove his truck north into a southbound I-55 off-ramp, killing Lauren Wegner in a crash moments later. Officials say Woods’ blood-alcohol content after the collision measured 0.177% — more than twice the legal limit.
Woods testified at trial that he “didn’t know exactly” what he was doing when he pulled away from the traffic stop, but he understood he was driving the wrong way onto an off-ramp.
O’Dea accused Woods of lying about that when she spoke Tuesday. She said Lauren Wegner was someone who actually could have helped Woods if they had known each other.
“She would have saved you long before you had a gun or a rope in your hand,” O’Dea said.
Bill and Evelyn Wegner told the judge how, when she worked as a bartender, their daughter made sure people got home safely after having too much to drink. Evelyn Wegner said it was “so sad she was killed by a drunken driver like you, Shane.”
But Bill Wegner also said he hoped his daughter would be defined by how she lived her life.
He called his daughter someone who could “lift even the heaviest of hearts.”
“Lauren, my bestest girl,” he said, “you are loved beyond words.”