Congratulations to the August Co-Employees of the Month: Officers Greg Spayth, Brian Hester, Nikole Petersen, David Bemer, Chris Bosson; and Investigator Angel Nieves. Their efforts in a lengthy investigation into two taxi cab robberies and a separate theft from a guest at a downtown hotel led to grand jury indictments against the suspect. The robberies occurred on February 14 and 23 and both involved a male suspect robbing the cab drivers at knifepoint and then stealing the vehicles once the drivers escaped. In both incidents, the drivers, both of whom suffered minor injuries, picked up the suspect at the downtown transportation center and both taxis were found shortly after the crimes in the area of Downer Place and River Street. Given the similarities of the cases, Officer Spayth reviewed video from the transportation center’s cameras. His attention was drawn to a man wearing a distinctive coat he thought could be a suspect. On February 25, Officer Hester responded to the hotel, located in the first block of West Galena Boulevard, for the theft report. While reviewing surveillance video of the crime, he saw that the suspect was wearing a coat similar to the one being worn by the suspect in the taxicab robberies. After learning the name of the possible suspect, Officers Spayth and Petersen located Facebook photographs of the man wearing the same distinctive coat. The two then set up a surveillance detail at the transportation center hoping to catch the suspect before he struck again. On February 26, he was seen entering a cab prompting the two officers to conduct an investigative stop on the taxi. The man was taken into custody and a knife was found on the seat in which he was sitting. Officers Bemer and Bosson then went to the hotel and discovered the suspect’s room had been cleaned out by management and his clothes were being stored at the front desk. They noted that the distinctive coat was among the items of clothing. Investigator Nieves secured a search warrant in order to have the clothing processed for evidence. After Nieves and Spayth interviewed the man, they were able to charge him with the hotel theft but not the taxicab robberies. The robberies ceased while the suspect was in jail. Forensic evidence recently came back from the Illinois State Police Crime Lab which tied the man to robberies and led to the grand jury indictments. An outstanding job by all of the officers involved!
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 21:52:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015