Results tagged “aurora”

Daniel Vincent, 28, Aurora, was accused on Friday of robbing a First Federal Bank in Lexington, Kentucky. Vincent previously served over five years in federal prison for admitting to robbing 16 banks. On Friday, Vincent led Kentucky police on a 25-mile chase after allegedly robbing a bank in Lexington, authorities reported. Vincent entered the First Federal Bank around 11:30 a.m., implied that he had a weapon, and left the bank with an undisclosed amount of cash, authorities said.

• More trouble at Fenger High where five students were arrested today following a lunch-time brawl.
• Carolyn Towns is the last of the four Burr Oak suspects to be released on bail, leaving jail this afternoon.
• An Aurora man has been charged with filing a false police report, including creating three false suspects, after an incident this weekend.

• A barricade situation on the city's West Side was peacefully resolved this afternoon.
• An off-duty Chicago Police officer was killed in an early morning car crash on the Kennedy Expressway.
• Kirk Dillard got an endorsement in his race for governor from former governor Jim Edgar.

We've all encountered creeps in our time, but few have more dedication to the craft than 19-year-old Quincy Forrester. Forrester, a college student from Aurora, has been charged with illegally entering unlocked apartments of three different women at the Amli Lane complex and--believe it--rubbing their legs as they slept. When they awoke to Forrester's rather forward advances, he would flee, according to authorities. He was arrested early Sunday morning after matching the description the women gave the police. Forrester was officially charged with three counts of criminal trespass and his bail was set at a hefty $100,000.

• Police have arrested a teenager in connection with the stabbing death of his mother's boyfriend; the mother and boyfriend had been fighting and the teen allegedly stabbed the man to protect his mother.
• What not to do when protesting a traffic ticket: threaten authorities with a BB gun.
• Thomas J. Thibeault, executive director for the Chicago Newspaper Guild, has reported that there appears to be a second bidder interested in purchasing the Sun-Times Media Group.

• At his trial for the Brown's Chicken murders, a high school friend of James Degorski testified today that Degorski admitted committing the murders.
• An Aurora man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for acting as a lookout during a gang-related beating that resulted in the victim's death.
• Some local post offices are under review for possible closings.

Marcus is stomping around like a kid on pixie dust right now with the news that Chick-fil-A is in the planning stages to open some stores in the greater Chicago area. The first will be in Aurora's Westfield Fox Valley Shopping Center, with plans for others to come.

Among the 2,200 layoffs Caterpillar, Inc. announced yesterday, a total of 1,526 will come from Illinois, including 815 from its hydraulic excavators plant located in Aurora. Of those, 665 will be production workers and 150 will be management and support positions. The layoffs will begin in June and will continue through the end of the year. A memo sent to workers calls the layoffs "indefinite" but the company expressed hope that some of the positions cut may be recalled in the future. [Tribune]

Air Angels, the emergency transport company based in Bolingbrook that was involved in a helicopter crash in Aurora that killed four people last October, announced yesterday that it is going out of business. Air Angels and its parent company are facing a lawsuit from the family of the 14-month-old patient that was killed in the crash, and their helicopters have been grounded for two months. The full report of what caused the crash has not been released yet, but the the attorney working for the family said that the Air Angels could have prevented the crash if it had installed navigation software and followed federal recommendations to use a terrain avoidance warning system in the cockpit. The company's 33 employees all received a 60-day notice of termination yesterday, and Air Angels says it is working with local hospitals to assure emergency transport services in the region are not compromised.

Approximately 120 tons of road salt (also known as a "shit-ton") has gone missing from an Aurora storage facility since October 1. The total value of the stolen salt comes out to around $32,000.

The police report noted how difficult the theft would have been from a locked facility. Twelve large concrete blocks and a tarp had to be moved to take the salt, which likely would have been moved by truck, police said.

Continue reading "Salt Unseen"

Four people, including a one-year-old baby, were killed when a medical helicopter bound for Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital clipped a WBIG radio tower and crashed in a field in Aurora. Besides the girl, a pilot, nurse, and paramedic were killed by the crash; no one on the ground was injured. The Air Angels copter flight had originated from Valley West Hospital in Sandwich. The helicopter clipped the tower shortly before midnight, but officials are speculating there may have been problems with the flight already because it was flying so low; under normal conditions, the copter should not have been flying low enough to hit the tower (the height of which ranges from 690 to 750 feet, depending on which media outlet's info you believe). Residents of a nearby apartment complex were evacuated for fear of damage from guide wires in the event the damaged tower collapsed.

Aurora police are examining surveillance footage from a grocery store two sisters, Patricia (14) and Maria Chavez (4), visited shortly before they disappeared last night. The footage shows a man following the girls through the store for several minutes. Police showed the video to the girls' mother, Zulema Pena, who said there was, "a man following them, someone right behind them. Following for 10 minutes." Aurora police spokesman Dan Ferrelli said, "It's really hard to tell if his movements could be considered suspicious. That's certainly something we're aware of and we're looking at."

Remember how cougars were showing up in Illinois? They still are, this time in Wilmette.

Want to be in a Johnny Depp movie? Hells to the yes you do. The new Dillinger biopic he's in is looking for extras in Aurora on April 5 and 6.

An Aurora teen was sentenced to 27 days in jail for posting what prosecutors called threats on his MySpace page. The 15-year-old East Aurora High School student agreed to a plea bargain today, having already served that time. He was also sentenced to 21 days of electronic home monitoring and a year of probation, during which he's only allowed to use the internet for homework.

To paraphrase Merle Haggard, "It's not close, but it's not bad." A Sonic Drive-In franchisee has chosen to set up the first greater Chicago area franchise of the venerable fast food chain in Aurora, in a retail development at Kirk and Butterfield Roads anchored by a Wal-Mart. You know, so the NASCAR set doesn't feel homesick.