Ex-Con Fired Over Conviction; Administrators Remain

With campus security in the spotlight after the tragedy at Virginia Tech, the chancellor of the University of Illinois at Chicago last month reminded students and staff that "we all need to look out for each other."

But since 1999, some UIC bosses have been looking the other way while employing a man who was convicted of attempted murder and is now on probation because police found more than a dozen guns -- two of them loaded -- in his basement.

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Thomas J. Morano (inset) remained on the job even after the school learned he was convicted last year on gun charges. He was placed on paid leave last week.

(Sun-Times file)

Thomas J. Morano, 52, lied about his 1977 conviction for shooting a man in the chest and leaving him partially paralyzed when UIC hired him to work in the campus garage on March 4, 1996. Almost a year later, campus officials learned that he had served almost nine years in prison for the crime.

But Morano wasn't fired. He was allowed to resign -- and then was rehired at UIC on July 12, 1999. UIC promoted him to garage foreman, earning $62,000 a year, on Dec. 18, 2005. Less than a month later, Chicago Police went to Morano's house on a tip and hauled him in on felony weapons possession charges.