Thursday, February 28, 2013
A Chicago man was trying to protect himself and his Plainfield girlfriend when he shot her former boyfriend twice in the back, his lawyers said.
When Ricardo Gutierrez shot Javier Barrios twice in the back in October 2007, he was trying to protect his girlfriend, her young daughter and himself, his lawyers said Thursday. "It's about domestic violence. It's about self-defense. It's about fear and how people react to fear," attorney Jeff Tomczak said of what led Gutierrez, 23, to shoot Barrios, who was 18 when he died. "It's not a case of murder," said Gutierrez's other lawyer, Paul Napolski. "It's about a set of circumstances wherein a young man is forced to protect the woman he loves and the 10-month-old child he adores from the threat of immediate harm." Regardless, both Gutierrez and the woman he loves, Gabriela Escutia, 24, are up on murder charges, and Gutierrez's trial started…
Monday, December 17, 2012
A juvenile male was found with an Airsoft pistol in the parking lot of the church, according to police.
Yorkville police responded in force to calls reporting someone with a gun in front of St. Patrick's Catholic Church on Monday afternoon. "It was mayhem for a while," Police Chief Richard Hart said after it was all over late Monday afternoon. Sometime between 4:30 and 4:45 p.m., a 911 call reported a young man carrying a handgun, Hart said. That is about the same time children show up to the church for religious studies classes, said Father Matt Lamoureux, pastor of St. Patrick's. Hart said he was one of the first officers to respond and they found a 17-year-old juvenile male in the parking lot carrying what Hart described as an Airsoft pistol that looked like a lethal handgun. Police descended on the juvenile with weapons drawn, Hart said…
41.652878
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Saint Patricks Church
406 Walnut St, Yorkville, IL
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Friday, November 2, 2012
A local teen was jailed for allegedly shooting at a woman.
A teenage boy went to juvenile jail for letting bullets fly at a woman driving on Englewood Avenue Halloween night. The 15-year-old was taken into custody at a residence on Luther Avenue about 5 p.m. Thursday and booked into River Valley Juvenile Detention Center on a charge of aggravated discharge of a firearm. The teen allegedly shot up a woman's car on Englewood Avenue about 5:30 the evening before. The woman was heading south on Englewood when the teen, who was riding in a car ahead of her, stuck a gun out and fired twice, police said. One bullet reportedly hit the hood of the woman's car and the other shattered a window. The gun attack was in retaliation for a previous shooting investigated by the Will County Sheriff's Department, …
Thursday, November 1, 2012
The missing woman's boyfriend told the Joliet police she stole a bunch of his cash and one of his guns, a detective said.
The Joliet police are searching for a missing mother of three whose boyfriend said she stole a load of his cash and one of his handguns, investigators said. Linda Fellenbaum, 33, had moved in with the boyfriend about two months ago and was last seen departing his 3608 Crockett Court home on foot, said Joliet police Cmdr. Brian Benton. Not only was she on foot, said the missing woman's mother, Deborah Barr, but she was barefoot, having left her shoes behind in the boyfriend's house. "Her car, her phone, her shoes," Barr said of the various items her daughter left at the home of her boyfriend, 40-year-old Donald Wolak. The sudden departure from Wolak's home was on Oct. 21. Five days earlier, Benton said, the boyfriend—whom he declined to …
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Alm, a Republican candidate for the 86th District house seat, was threatened at (BB) gunpoint Tuesday and told to get out of the neighborhood.
OUTSIDE CHICAGO -- There's rough politics, and then there's staring down the barrel of a gun while you're out campaigning in the middle of the day. And that's what Republican 86th District state house candidate Ryan Alm said happened to him while he was walking the streets of Joliet's west side and knocking on doors Tuesday afternoon. "It couldn't be stranger," Alm said. "I couldn't imagine this would ever happen." Get all the latest Joliet news in your inbox every morning. Sign up for our free daily newsletter. Alm said he was speaking with an older woman outside her home near the corner of Madison Street and Black Road about 1 p.m. when a young man rode by on a bicycle and asked, "Is there a problem here." Alm assured the cyclist there …
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Is vigilante justice an American right?
Right off the bat, I'll 'fess up to not knowing all the facts. Indeed, I don't think anyone ever will. What we do know is that 17-year-old Trayvon Martin is dead, and George Zimmerman admits to shooting him. Details are still coming out. As I write this, the story I'm reading in numerous news reports is that the teen was walking through a somewhat affluent neighborhood north of Orlando. He was a tall, unarmed black teen wearing a hoodie over his head after dark. Zimmerman was an armed neighborhood watch volunteer. He followed Martin, and reported the "suspicious" teen to the police. The police told Zimmerman to stop following Martin. Zimmerman kept it up, and got out of his SUV carrying a gun. An ABC report says the pseudo-cop sounded …
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Email messages written by the slain wife of accused killer Christopher Vaughn can be seen by a jury, a Will County judge ruled Thursday.
The attorney for accused killer Christopher Vaughn said the Oswego man wouldn't "have a chance" of beating a murder rap if a jury got a look at emails written by his slain wife. Chance or no chance, Will County Judge Daniel Rozak cleared the way Thursday morning for a jury to see at least 50 of Kimberly Vaughn's emails, along with what the judge called "hundreds and hundreds and hundreds" of computer chats the dead woman carried on with friends and family, including the husband charged with killing her. Prosecutors have pushed to get the messages allowed as evidence to counter Christopher Vaughn's claim to police that his wife gunned down their three children and shot him in the leg before turning the pistol on herself and committing …
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Missouri attorney representing Oswego man charged with murdering his entire family misses Tuesday's court appearance, further delaying nearly 4-year-old case.
A half-dozen relatives of slain mother Kimberly Vaughn made the five-hour trip from the St. Louis area to Joliet for a crucial hearing in the murder case against her husband, Christopher Vaughn. But the lawyer for the allegedly murderous husband stayed back in Missouri, making the family's journey a waste. Prosecutors were poised to push for emails written by Kimberly Vaughn to be used as evidence against Christopher Vaughn, 37, said Charles B. Pelkie, the spokesman for the Will County State's Attorney's Office. But whether they were ready, Missouri attorney John Rogers was nowhere to be found, leading Judge Daniel Rozak to put off the hearing for at least a month. Rozak scheduled a May 10 appearance for Vaughn at which lawyers for both …
Stosh Wytonic
5:29 pm on Saturday, March 2, 2013
Illinois State Crime Commission "State's Attorney of the Year" for two of the four years he was our State's Attorney. He's a good lawyer, period. He earned his pay as State's Attorney, and I'm sure he is on this case. more ›