Chicagoist Weekend Blotter

By Karl Klockars in News on Nov 10, 2007 11:28PM

We now join another one of our irregular weekend crime & punishment updates, already in progress.

Weird shit doesn't only happen on Craigslist: A woman answered a newspaper ad for a roommate and ended up getting robbed and sexually assaulted. It's easy to scare people away from the big bad internet when people meet up for a "Casual Encounter" and it turns out bad. Unfortunately, the traditional classifieds don't seem much safer, now do they?

Good News, Bad News: First, the good news. You've been acquitted of firing a gun at police officers. Bad news: the "aggravated discharge of a firearm," which occured when Genaro Villanueva threw a gun away while fleeing the cops, carries a sentence of 10 to 40 years. In other words, "We guess you didn't try to shoot at the cops...but a bullet ended up near them anyways. Sucks to be you."

Let it snow, let it snow: 94 kilos of blow were found in a NW Side house on Friday morning. That'd be worth about $12 million on the streets, mang. For comparison's sake: If you decided to make a cocaineman out of that much product, it'd be about 210 lbs., or Celebrity Fit Club's Mia Tyler.

And finally... He's been paroled, his sentence is up, so why is Gary Welsh still in custody? Because of a 1998 law that says he can be kept there if he's still too dangerous to be released. In 1962 Welsh raped and killed a 3-year-old girl, and Illinois state law has kept him behind bars since he was paroled in 2005. Now it's either freedom or a long-term commitment in a state mental hospital. Not hard to figure out which would be preferable.

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