Former Glendale Heights man sentenced to 32 years in prison for graduation party murder

A former Glendale Heights resident was sentenced Thursday to 32 years in prison for the 2015 stabbing death of a man at a graduation party.

Alberto Jimenez, 23, in January entered a plea of guilty to one count of first-degree murder and one count of aggravated battery in front of DuPage County Judge Alex McGimpsey, who handed down the sentence, according to a DuPage State's Attorney's Office news release.

McGimpsey sentenced Jimenez to 30 years to be served at one hundred percent on the first-degree murder charge and two years to be served at 50 percent on the aggravated battery charge. The sentences will be served consecutively.

On June 6, 2015, at approximately 10:36 p.m., DuPage County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a 911 call of a fight in progress on Prairie Avenue in unincorporated Glen Ellyn. Deputies found two victims suffering from what appeared to be stab wounds. The victims were identified as Tehavis Price, 19, of Aurora, and Verkita Vargas. Both Price and Vargas were transported to a local hospital where Price was pronounced dead.

An investigation found that at some time prior to the stabbing, Jimenez went to the home on Prairie Avenue to attend a graduation party. While at the party, Jimenez approached a vehicle in which Price and Vargas were sitting, opened the front driver’s side door of the vehicle and stabbed Vargas in the abdomen as she sat in the vehicle, the release stated.

Price exited the passenger side of the vehicle and approached Jimenez at which time Jimenez stabbed Price several times in the upper body. After the stabbings, Jimenez fled the scene. He was arrested the following morning in Hanover Park. He has remained in custody at the DuPage County Jail since his arrest.

“This afternoon, five years after the violent murder of Tehavis Price, Judge McGimpsey sentenced Alberto Jimenez to a well-deserved thirty-two years in the Illinois Department of Corrections,” DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said in the release. “The senseless murder of this young man however, will be felt by those who loved Tehavis for the rest of their lives.”