CBS4 RTV4 WHBF Quad Cities, IL / IA News Weather SportsKolb Retrial Headed for Dixon, IL
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It has been a long year for the Reynolds family. 16-year old Adrianne Reynolds was murdered in January and, after a grueling 3-week murder trial in November for one of the defendants, a mistrial was declared. The Reynolds family says they plan to see this case through until the very end, which now looks like it may be in Dixon, IL.
The Lee County Courthouse in Dixon, IL will soon be a familiar place for the Reynolds family. The retrial for Sarah Kolb, the teen accused in the brutal killing of Adrianne Reynolds, is set to begin inside a Dixon, IL courtroom on February 6th.
Reynolds' stepmother says the family will be there and they are confident that justice will be served this time around.
"I'm very confident," says Joann Reynolds. "We had eleven jurors that had 'guilty' and one that said he didn't understand the words 'intent to kill', so I feel the odds are on our side."
Rock Island State's Attorney Jeff Terronez will continue to prosecute. He too is optimistic about the case.
"I think that if you remove a case far enough away from the community that has been impacted by what's happened, you run into people I think who may have heard about the case but may not have formed any opinions about it," Terronez says.
It was Sarah Kolb's attorneys who asked the judge to move the case out of Rock Island County, saying the intense media coverage would prevent the 17-year old from getting a fair trial. With the new location set, they will spend the next few weeks doing a little homework to gauge how far the publicity has traveled.
"We'll just decide if we'll just leave it the way it is or push a little harder," says defense attorney Dave Hoffman, "if we find out that there's a reason to think Dixon's just another Rock Island."
The case has certainly taken plenty of twists along the way and Judge Teros is preparing for everything. He says if an impartial jury can not be seated in Dixon, his backup plan is to move the case to Peoria.
The Kolb re-trial will likely impact the trial of her co-defendant Cory Gregory whose trial is set to begin on February 21st.
"I'm going to wait and see what happens," says Gregory's attorney Steve Hanna. "My case will likely be continued, there's not much doubt about that, because they're going to overlap and they can't overlap. That's my read on it."
Hanna says he'll ask a judge to push back Gregory's February 21st court date and may also ask that the trial be moved out of Rock Island.
