Kirk Tobolski Gets Second-Degree Murder For Killing Of Brendan Scanlon, Street Artist

Kirk Tobolski has been sentenced to second-degree murder in the stabbing of a beloved street artist in Logan Square.

Brendan Scanlon, the artist known as SOLVE, was stabbed to death during an altercation near the corner of Lyndale Street and Sacramento Avenue early Saturday, June 14, 2008. His death caused an outpouring of sympathy and anger in the artistic community and around the neighborhood, and Tobolski's arrest and trial have been closely watched.

According to investigators, Scanlon himself initiated a fight that night, after seeing someone he thought broke his apartment window months earlier. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the man Scanlon came after was a friend of Tobolski's. When Tobolski gathered friends together and came down the alley to fight back, a melee ensued.

During the fight, as the Chicago Tribune reported when the trial began, Tobolski stabbed Scanlon in the chest with a switchblade he'd received as a birthday present just a week earlier. Then he turned to Scanlon's friend, Joe Depre, and told him, "I know where you live, I'm going to kill your family."

On Friday, Judge Thomas Hennelly found Tobolski guilty of the murder. But he convicted him of the lesser charge of second-degree murder, saying that the attack was apparently not premeditated.

“Mr. Tobolski did stab Mr. Scanlon. He did kill him,” the judge said, according to the Sun-Times, but he acted with “a sudden intense passion when provoked by Mr. Scanlon," not any prepared notion of violence.

Second-degree murder carries with it a typical sentence of four to 20 years in prison, as opposed to 20 to life for first-degree murder.