News Article: " 'Vigilante' killed in Randall crash" Beacon News; Aurora, Illinois. Article dated April 28, 1996. Excerpt "Dennis Leland, an Aurora man who was convicted in connection with a vigilante attack last summer, was killed early Saturday in a head-on crash . . . Leland, 55, won local fame last June when, as a culmination of years of ongoing hassles, he tossed a Molotov cocktail into a neighboring house frequented by gang members. Leland died .. . when the southbound taxi he was driving on Randall Road a half-mile north of Main Street was struck head-on by a northbound 1993 Ford pickup truck. The pickup truck's driver, Wade V. Muranyi, 32, of Elburn, has been charged with driving in the wrong lane and driving under the influence, police said. . . . The pickup truck Muranyi was driving crossed the median and collided with Leland's taxi, a 1983 Buick station wagon, Kane County sheriff's police said. . . .The July 1995 firebombing incident, for which Leland claimed much remorse, ended a day of feuding in which shots had been fired into his home. Leland pleaded guilty to a charge of misdemeanor reckless conduct and received a sentence of 18 months' court supervision and a $185 fine. . . . Raising money to pay his legal bills was one reason that Leland, coming off two years of disability relating to a back injury and abdominal surgery, was driving the cab, his wife Sherry said. She described her husband as a "dedicated, full-time, loving father." "His work life was somewhat on and off," she added, "but, as a father he was a one-and-only and every woman's dream." Leland was father to three daughters (Deeda Worthington, 35, of Houston, Texas; Maria Leland, 33, of West Palm Beach, Fla.; and Roda Walton, 23, of Elgin) and stepfather to his third wife's two sons (Army Capt. Brian Paxton, 30, of Fort Lewis, Wash., and R. Joe Paxton, 28, of Aurora). "We also had maybe 13-14 foster children through the years, and everyone of them loved him like he was their own dad," Sherry said. "I remember him coming home from work, and there always would be four or five neighbor kids waiting for him to help them fix their bikes, and he always had time for them." "Other times, he'd load up three or four of our own and then fill the rest of the van with neighbor kids to take them all to a carnival.""Now, his five grandchildren will be deprived of that."