A Logan Square man who warned a neighbor to “watch what I’m going to do” moments before driving his pickup into a group of picnickers in 2021 was sentenced to more than nine years in prison on Wednesday, according to court records.
Timothy Nielsen, 62, pleaded guilty to one count of attempted murder during a hearing before Judge Shelley Sutker-Dermer. She sentenced him to 9½ years.
The plea came after Nielsen exhausted a years-long effort to get the case thrown out on double jeopardy grounds. He argued that the prosecution was unconstitutional because he had already pleaded guilty to a reckless driving ticket issued at the scene. But the courts rejected that argument, clearing the way for the case to move forward.
Prosecutors said the incident unfolded shortly after 5 p.m. on May 1, 2021, when Nielsen slammed his Ford F-150 into a birthday picnic gathering along the 2900 block of West Logan Boulevard. Prosecutors said Nielsen pulled his red pickup into a nearby alley and began speaking with a man who was watering flowers. After asking how long the man had lived in the neighborhood, Nielsen complained about “yuppies on the boulevard” and told him, “watch what I’m going to do,” prosecutors said.
Less than a minute later, people screamed from the boulevard’s parkway. When the neighbor ran toward the noise, he saw what prosecutors described as “chaos unfolding.”
Nielsen had driven to a group celebrating a birthday, argued about their dogs, and became hostile when the group asked him to leave, prosecutors said. Instead of driving off, Nielsen backed up, turned his several-ton truck toward the gathering, and accelerated.
His Ford F150 rolled over bicycles, chairs, and a YETI cooler before the cooler became wedged beneath the vehicle and stopped it from moving farther, according to prosecutors. One woman became pinned under the truck. A second victim suffered minor injuries when struck while trying to flee. Two others managed to get out of the way.
Even as the group shouted that someone was trapped beneath the truck, prosecutors said, Nielsen kept trying to accelerate. The woman was treated for her injuries and later released.
“But for that YETI cooler… this may be a very different case,” a prosecutor said during Nielsen’s initial detention hearing.
Another woman driving past the scene got out of her car, ran to Nielsen’s truck, switched off the engine, grabbed the keys, and took a knife that he allegedly swung at people trying to pull him from the driver’s seat, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors also detailed Nielsen’s history of violence. In 1989, he and another man kidnapped a victim at gunpoint while posing as police officers, took him to a garage, beat him, and demanded ransom. He later pleaded guilty.
He also pleaded guilty to a federal extortion case in 2001. According to a contemporaneous Chicago Tribune report, Nielsen was accused of crushing a glass into the face of an escort service operator who owed his brother money for a “juice” loan.
In 2012, he received a three-year sentence for retail theft.
Nielsen must serve 85 percent of his attempted murder sentence, minus 999 days of credit for the time he has already spent in custody since his arrest.
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