A 20-year-old Peoria man will spend more than three years in prison for Possession of a machine gun. Tajurie Amir Bennett was sentenced by U.S. District Judge James E. Shadid on January 4, 2024, to 41 months in prison followed by three years of Mandatory Supervised Release. On February 24, 2023, around 2:30 AM, Bennett and another subject committed a drive-by shooting of a residence on West Gift Avenue in Peoria. A ShotSpotter gun detection system in the area identified 15 rounds of fully automatic gunfire. Police responded to the alert and located gunfire damage to the front of the house and on a gas utility line of a residence nearby, as well as bullet holes on a car on an adjacent street.
Police located the suspect vehicle and attempted to make a traffic stop. The vehicle fled from marked police vehicles at a high rate of speed and drove into oncoming traffic at times. The vehicle was occupied only by Bennett at the time. Police Officers in covert vehicles monitored Bennett’s location during the chase. They were able to box in the suspect vehicle when it came to a stop at a red light at the intersection of War Memorial Drive and Allen Road. Bennett rammed his vehicle into police vehicles, nearly striking an officer attempting to arrest him. After police extricated Bennett from the car, officers located a loaded 9mm “ghost gun” with no serial number on the floorboard. The pistol was loaded and equipped with a high-capacity extended ammunition magazine. The gun was equipped with an auto-sear, commonly referred to as a “switch, ” enabling the pistol to fire as a fully automatic machine gun.
A federal criminal complaint was filed against Bennett in February 2023, followed by a one-count indictment in March 2023. Bennett entered a guilty plea with no plea agreement in June 2023. He has remained in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service since his arrest.
The statutory penalties for possession of a machinegun are up to 10 years in prison, followed by up to three years of supervised release.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Peoria Police Department investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald L. Hanna represented the government in the prosecution.
The case against Bennett is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a program bringing together all levels of law enforcement and the communities they serve to reduce violent crime and gun violence and make our neighborhoods safer. On May 26, 2021, the Department launched a violent crime reduction strategy strengthening PSN based on these core principles: fostering trust and legitimacy in our communities, supporting community-based organizations that help prevent violence from occurring in the first place, setting focused and strategic enforcement priorities, and measuring the results.
