CHICAGO — A man who received a 35-year prison sentence for murder in 1985 was sentenced on Friday to another 888 years in prison for murdering his neighbor at the Lakeview YMCA in 2018.
George Field, 62, was found guilty of seven counts of murder and one count of home invasion during a bench trial by Judge James Obbish on January 29. On Friday, Obbish handed down Field’s sentence: 8 years for the home invasion count and 888 years for the murder charges, with the sentences to be served concurrently.
Arthur Cannon, 83, died on January 12, 2018, ten days after Field battered him in his room at the YMCA, 3333 North Marshfield, according to prosecutors. The Cook County Medical Examiner determined Cannon died from multiple injuries suffered in an assault.
Prosecutors said Field was holding a “hand truck or dolly” to Cannon’s head when the building’s security staff first arrived on the scene. Field allegedly threatened to kill Cannon unless security gave him cigarettes and a drink of water.
CPD responded and found Field sitting on top of the badly injured Cannon in the victim’s fourth-floor apartment, according to court records.
Cannon was able to tell officers that he and Field had a heated argument before Field struck him repeatedly in the body with closed fists. Prosecutors said Cannon suffered broken ribs and facial fractures in the beating. His condition gradually deteriorated and he eventually succumbed to his injuries.
Field was arrested at the scene shortly after the attack to face a charge of misdemeanor battery. Prosecutors dropped that case after Cannon died and filed murder charges.
In 1985, Field was found guilty of four counts of murder, two counts of aggravated battery, and one count of attempted murder in a bench trial overseen by now-deceased Cook County Judge Francis Mahon. Field was sentenced to 35 years on the murder and aggravated battery charges and 30 years on the attempted murder count, to be served concurrently. He was paroled in 2006.
No further details were available about the previous case.
In a sad coincidence, another man was murdered on the fourth floor of the Lakeview YMCA in September 2023.
Officers found the 27-year-old victim fatally shot inside another resident’s apartment with a handgun lying nearby. But the man who lived in the unit, 45-year-old Danny Berry, was no longer there. The medical examiner determined that the death was a homicide.
The day after the murder, CPD detectives learned that Berry’s phone was pinging in Ohio. They alerted the Ohio State Highway Patrol and troopers located Berry’s car traveling in a rural area on I-75. Even after police deployed stop sticks, Berry continued to speed away and troopers eventually forced the vehicle to crash. It burst into flames.
Berry emerged from the burning vehicle with a handgun and began walking on the interstate, police said. A trooper subsequently shot him and he later died from those injuries.
An investigation of the police shooting by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office found that Berry “told the Troopers that he was not going to [go] back to jail and he was going to kill himself.” A police supervisor gave a trooper authorization to shoot Berry because he was ignoring police commands and was getting closer to civilians while armed, the report said.
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