MAN WHO AIMED GUN AT TRIO IN PRISON

A Brookfield man with an extensive criminal record who was arrested by La Grange police this past summer after pointing a loaded gun at a woman and two men outside a bar one block west of the village limits will be spending the next seven years behind bars.
Stanley Wisniowicz, 47, who was on parole from serving a 2-year sentence in state prison when he was charged with numerous felonies in connection with the Aug. 4 altercation outside of Brixie's in neighboring Brookfield, was sentenced in mid-November, according to the Cook County State's Attorneys Office.

The incident began at about 2:20 a.m. that day when Wisniowicz said something to the 27-year-old Hanover Park woman as she boarded a motorcycle driven by one of the men. After a verbal altercation over what one Brookfield police officer called "nothing" much, the offender pulled out at Smith & Wesson .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun and aimed it at the three.

Shortly thereafter, he ran a block and a half west to the Citgo/7-Eleven at East and Ogden avenues, after dumping the gun in some bushes by the nearby abandoned Moose Lodge.

After Wisniowicz was arrested by La Grange police and turned over to Brookfield detectives, a police dog from Wood Dale discovered the weapon, which had six bullets in the clip and one in the chamber. The gun had been stolen from a Brookfield home just two weeks earlier.

Wisniowicz, originally charged with three counts of aggravated assault, possession of stolen firearms, unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon, possession without a Firearm Owners Identification card and possession of ammunition without a FOID card, was sentenced after entering a guilty plea on just two felony charges: being an armed habitual criminal and unlawful possession of a firearm.

Held on a half-million-dollar bond since his arrest, Wisniowicz was just released from prison six months earlier. He was convicted in 2001 on three counts of residential burglary and was sentenced to 10 years in prison and was convicted on similar charges in 1987 and 1997. His first convicted at the age of 23 for an attempted burglary in 1986.