Repeat DUI offender who caused 1999 crash that killed little girl sentenced to 8 years for latest drunken driving offenses

January 7

JOLIET – A Yorkville man today was sentenced to eight years in prison for aggravated drunken driving offenses that occurred in 2010 and 2011. 

Glen Higginbotham Jr., 34, was convicted of aggravated driving under the influence of alcohol and aggravated driving with a revoked license stemming from a DUI crash on New Lenox Road on Christmas Day of 2011. Circuit Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak found him guilty in November at the conclusion of a bench trial.

In December 2010, Higginbotham was arrested and later pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated DUI and aggravated driving with a revoked license. In that case, he was found sleeping in his car while intoxicated on Nicholson Street in Joliet.

Prior to these cases, Higginbotham spent seven years in prison after being convicted of reckless homicide for a drunken driving crash in 1999 that killed a 10-year-old girl in Lockport. Higginbotham had been driving with a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit and speeding at 81 mph, more than 45 mph above the posted speed limit, when he struck a car in which the little girl was a passenger.

After serving that sentence, he was arrested in 2010 and in 2011 for the new DUI offenses.  The judge sentenced Higginbotham to four years in prison for aggravated DUI in the 2011 incident and four years in prison for aggravated DUI in the 2010 incident. The sentences run consecutive to each other for a total of eight years.

“Glen Higginbotham is a menace to society whose abject failure to learn even the smallest lesson after causing a crash that killed a little girl has landed him back in prison where he belongs,” said State’s Attorney Glasgow. 

“Higginbotham is completely lacking in decency and remorse. Our streets and our community are safer with him behind bars.”

Assistant State’s Attorneys Frank Byers and Tom Slazyk prosecuted the recent cases against Higginbotham.