Illinois Appeals Court Upholds Suppression of Gun Found in Waukegan Basement, Rejecting All Six State Arguments

CHICAGO (LN) — An Illinois appellate panel on Monday unanimously affirmed the suppression of a pistol found in a Waukegan basement, ruling that officers who had already cleared the space of any human threat had no constitutional basis to keep hunting for a weapon — and that six separate theories the State offered to save the evidence all failed.

Darren L. Aldridge faces charges of aggravated discharge of a firearm, unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon, and two counts of aggravated unlawful possession of a firearm arising from a December 21, 2024, shooting near the intersection of Grand Avenue and Butrick Street in Waukegan. Witnesses told police a man in red pants and a reflective yellow vest fired a chrome 9-millimeter handgun at another person, then fled on foot to 1411 Grand Avenue, where he lived with his aunt, Latanya Rucker.

Officers lost sight of Aldridge during the chase, established a perimeter, and formed a reaction team. Before the team entered, Aldridge walked out the front door and was taken into custody — with no weapon on him. Officers nonetheless entered the basement through an unlocked rear door and conducted a protective sweep, finding no one inside. Sergeant Baysinger then directed officers to keep searching for weapons. Officer Haske moved a black metal lock box that was sitting on top of the furnace, and a pistol slid forward.

The Lake County circuit court suppressed the gun, finding the sweep had secured the basement and that any further search required a warrant. The Second District affirmed on every point.

On standing, the panel accepted the trial court's findings that Aldridge had lived at the apartment for six years, paid his aunt $250 a month in rent, received mail there, and shared exclusive access to the basement with Rucker — the upstairs tenants had none. The court rejected the State's argument that an unlocked exterior basement door undermined that privacy interest, noting that the State cited nothing to support the proposition that any entry through that door without permission would have been anything other than a trespass, and that the possibility of a trespass does not defeat a reasonable expectation of privacy.

On exigent circumstances, the panel held that once the protective sweep was complete and the basement was cleared, no exigency remained. An individual who called down from the interior stairwell — identified through Rucker's later testimony as her brother, though officers never learned his identity during the search — was cooperative and directed back upstairs. The court drew on People v. Rushing and People v. Carter to conclude that a loose, unsecured gun, standing alone, does not create an exigency, particularly where officers could have held the perimeter and sought a warrant. In the inevitable discovery section of its analysis, the panel quoted from Coolidge v. New Hampshire for the proposition that no amount of probable cause can justify a warrantless search or seizure absent exigent circumstances.

The hot-pursuit and search-incident-to-arrest arguments fared no better. The panel noted that Aldridge was arrested outside the front of the house, making the basement furnace — where the gun was found — plainly outside his immediate control. On inevitable discovery, the court held that no independent line of investigation had been started; the officers who arrested Aldridge were simply part of the same perimeter operation, and the mere capacity to have obtained a warrant is not the same as having pursued one.

The good-faith exception also fell short. The State identified no warrant, no statute, and no appellate precedent that officers could have relied on to justify expanding the sweep. The panel noted that Maryland v. Buie limits a protective sweep to a cursory visual inspection of those places in which a person might be hiding — and that Haske's search took him behind a mirror, into a grill, a tall vase, a laundry basket, a small cardboard box of Christmas lights, and several other containers before he found the gun.

The case returns to Lake County for further proceedings, with the pistol — the central piece of evidence in a four-count felony case — still suppressed.