A Chicago man who lured two firefighters into his home by reporting a natural gas leak, then barricaded them inside at knifepoint while awaiting trial in a decades-old murder case, has been sentenced to 28 years in prison, court records show.
A jury in May acquitted Melvin Jordan, 50, of attempted murder but convicted him on two counts each of armed kidnapping and aggravated unlawful restraint—charges serious enough for Judge Nicholas Kantas to impose the stiff sentence, which Jordan must serve at 85%. He remains in custody as the other murder case, tied up in the courts since 2005, continues to work its way toward resolution.
In that case, Jordan was convicted of murdering rap producer Aaron Dickens and trying to kill another person on the West Side. A judge handed him a 41-year sentence, but the conviction was overturned in 2019 when a Cook County judge ruled that Jordan’s attorney had a significant conflict of interest: the same lawyer also represented Jordan’s alleged accomplice, Maurice Bryant.
Judge Lawrence Flood reversed both men’s convictions and vacated their sentences, and both were released on bail to await new trials. Last year, Bryant pleaded guilty and received a 20-year sentence from Kantas, satisfied by time already served.
Jordan might have found himself in the same boat — case resolved by time served — if his quest for a new trial had not taken a detour on August 29, 2023. At the time, he was free on a $45,000 bail deposit when the Chicago Fire Department responded to a 911 call and found his garage ablaze in the 7700 block of South Marshfield Avenue. While crews worked the fire, Jordan asked a battalion chief and a lieutenant to investigate a natural gas leak in his basement, prosecutors said during Jordan’s initial court hearing. Jordan unbolted the basement door with a drill, and the firefighters went inside.
They detected no gas odor, and they started to leave, but Jordan allegedly confronted them on the staircase, jabbing an 8- to 10-inch knife toward them.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Jordan told them, directing the men toward the living room, according to a transcript of the 2023 hearing. Inside the home, the firefighters discovered that the front and back doors had been barricaded with deadbolts and two-by-four boards. They tried to break through but could not. Jordan refused to let them leave, insisting he wanted to talk to the FBI. Both men eventually escaped by leaping out a front window.
Police and firefighters broke down the front door and found Jordan hiding in a bathroom. They recovered two knives and a gun holster from the apartment and found a handgun on an upstairs landing, officials said. Investigators also saw what they believed to be gasoline spread across the home’s first floor. Supporters of the firefighters believe Jordan had booby-trapped the house and intended to kill and burn the firefighters.
At the time of the 2005 shootings, Jordan was on parole for three Class X armed robberies committed in 2000. In one case, he followed a Radio Shack employee into a back room, forced the worker to their knees at gunpoint, handcuffed them to a desk, and fled with cash and merchandise. In another, Jordan and an accomplice robbed a hotel clerk at gunpoint and left the victim handcuffed to a vehicle behind the hotel. In a third robbery, Jordan and another person forced a clerk into the back of a store at gunpoint, ordered them to open the safe, and left them handcuffed to a vehicle behind the business.
