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The scene of the alleged home invasion in Sleepy Hollow, Ill. on Monday. (WFLD)
A butcher knife-wielding man is accused by police of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman before stabbing she and her brother and then threatening a neighbor to drive him out of the area during a reign of terror that has left an Illinois village on edge.
The suspect, who as of Tuesday has not been identified, was taken into custody a day earlier after being tracked down and tasered by police officers in Sleepy Hollow, outside of Chicago. The Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office told Fox News that the incident is still under investigation and charges are pending.
“The front door, it was a nice day here and the storm door is unlocked and the main door was open and he just walked in,” Sleepy Hollow Police Chief James Linane told WFLD, describing how the events there began with an alleged home invasion early Monday afternoon.
Police say while inside, the suspect, whom they believe was likely under the influence of either drugs or alcohol, sexually assaulted a 19-year-old high school senior. He stabbed her 17-year-old brother when he tried to intervene, while also stabbing her, they told WFLD.
All three then reportedly fled the home, leaving a trail of blood.
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Neighbors say the man found a second woman in her backyard and demanded she drive him away from the area, while also threatening to kill her with two butcher knives, according to WFLD. The woman is said to have scared the man off after screaming and then police made the arrest about a mile away in a field.
Both victims are expected to recover from their stab wounds. A motive for the chaos has not yet been determined.
Fox News’ Michael Sinkewicz contributed to this report.
Source: Fox News National
The Hope Clinic for Women put up a billboard advertising abortions on the Missouri-Illinois state border. (Courtesy of Hope Clinic for Women)
An Illinois abortion clinic is using a billboard to tout the state as an abortion-friendly alternative to others like Missouri, which has stringent laws on abortion.
“Welcome to Illinois, where you can get a safe, legal abortion,” the Hope Clinic for Women billboard reads near the Missouri-Illinois border.
ALYSSA MILANO PUSHES AGAINST GEORGIA ABORTION BAD, GEORGIA PUSHES BACK
“The goal of this billboard is to remind people coming in from Missouri that they are now in a state that trusts and allows pregnant people to make their own healthcare and family planning decisions,” Erin King, Hope Clinic executive director, said in a statement.
The Granite City, Ill., abortion clinic, located just 10 minutes outside of downtown St. Louis, got the idea from a liberal group that put up a similar billboard in Colorado near the Utah border.
BILL TO FORCE COLLEGE CAMPUSES TO PROVIDE ‘ABORTION PILLS’ ADVANCES IN CALIFORNIA
“It was just a no-brainer for us,” Alison Dreith, a Hope Clinic spokeswoman, told the Riverfront Times. Half of Hope Clinic’s patients come from Missouri to get an abortion.
As Missouri state legislators consider the “heartbeat bill,” making it illegal to get an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, the state only has one abortion clinic and has a 72-hour waiting period to get an abortion. That’s in stark contrast to Illinois, which is working to make abortion more and more accessible, including a bill that could repeal parental notification in the case of minors.
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Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, pledged at the beginning of the year to make Illinois “the most progressive state in the nation when it comes to standing up for women’s reproductive rights.”
Source: Fox News National
Small business owners across the country are beginning to feel the pinch as more states move toward a $15 minimum wage.
While proposals to raise pay are intended to help workers, several mom-and-pop coffee shops as well as restaurants are responding by cutting hours, eliminating jobs or closing down entirely because they can’t keep up with booming wages.
ILLINOIS GOVERNOR SIGNS MEASURE HIKING STATE’S MINIMUM WAGE TO $15
It’s the ugly side to the highly touted wage hikes, economists say, adding that the bumps can unleash a “payroll tsunami” for smaller businesses already stretched thin from rising rents and soaring health care costs.
“For some of these businesses, the minimum wage hikes tip the balance between staying in business and going out of business,” Panos Mourdoukoutas, professor of economics at LIU Post in New York, wrote in Forbes.
Boston’s iconic restaurant Durgin-Park in Faneuil Hall was forced to shutter its doors in January after nearly two centuries in business. The owners said they couldn’t keep up with the wages and health care premium hikes.
“We’d been thinking about [closing] for the last year,” Michael Weinstein, CEO of Ark Restaurants, which purchased Durgin-Park in 2007, told Boston.com. “First of all, our landlords are terrific. It’s an expense problem that we’ve been facing. We [own] several venues across the country that are facing a minimum wage increase. As part of that, we’re facing an increase in liability, property and health insurance.”
After winning her House race last year, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., “swung by” to say goodbye to the Coffee Shop in Union Square where she used to work.
She tweeted: “The restaurant I used to work at is closing its doors. I swung by today to say hi one last time, and kid around with friends like old times.”
What she didn’t say is that the popular coffee shop was closing its doors because it couldn’t afford the $15 minimum pay raise that Ocasio-Cortez has gone on to strongly support.
“The times have changed in our industry,” co-owner Charles Milite told The New York Post. “The rents are very high and now the minimum wage is going up and we have a huge number of employees.”
The American Action Forum calculates that minimum wage hikes will kill 261,000 jobs — with most of the losses concentrated in New York and California.
In just the last three months of last year, 4,000 workers lost jobs at full-service restaurants, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show. By the end of last year, there were fewer restaurant workers in New York than in November 2016, according to Investor’s Business Daily.
Last month, Maryland became the sixth state in the nation to approve a gradual minimum wage increase to $15 an hour. The American Action Forum predicts the move could cost the state 94,600 jobs.
“For perspective, this is equivalent to eliminating nearly 50 percent of projected job growth between 2016 and 2026,” Ben Gitis, director of labor market policy at American Action Forum, wrote. “Maryland is not in a strong position to absorb this shock, as it continued to experience below-average job growth while the state implemented its previous minimum wage hike from 2014 to 2018.”
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But supporters argue the hikes are needed to address income inequality and also keep up with inflation. The issue has been widely embraced by Democratic candidates on the presidential campaign trail, with several backing a bill to raise the wage to $15 an hour at the federal level.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a sponsor, has called the current minimum wage a “starvation wage.”
California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York all have approved a $15 minimum wage, as has the District of Columbia. Phoenix employees are on track for the hourly pay bump on May 1. In all, there are 20 states that have or will move toward a $15 wage.
Source: Fox News Politics
FILE – At least six people, including two children, were wounded in a drive-by shooting while at a family gathering on Chicago’s Southside on Saturday, authorities said.
An 8-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl were among at least six victims in a drive-by shooting Saturday evening that targeted a family party in a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, authorities said.
The shots were fired just before 6:30 p.m. from a red Chevrolet Equinox, Chicago police said.
ARIZONA MAN ARRESTED IN FATAL ROAD-RAGE SHOOTING OF GIRL, 10
Both children were rushed to a hospital where they were in stable condition, the Chicago Sun-Times reported, citing police. The 8-year-old boy was shot in his back and chest, and the girl was shot in a shin, authorities said.
The four adult victims included a 29-year-old woman shot in a shoulder and her chest, a 42-year-old man shot twice in a hip, a 23-year-old man hit in a foot, and a 28-year-old man wounded in a shoulder, police said.
The adult victims were all rushed to hospitals, where all were stabilized except for the woman, who was listed in critical condition, the paper reported.
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The scene provided little physical evidence for investigators, who were reviewing surveillance footage from nearby cameras, the Sun-Times reported.
Witnesses were not cooperating with officers, Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. Some witnesses told FOX32 Chicago the event was a baby shower, but police only confirmed it was a “family gathering.”
Source: Fox News National
Darius Hinkle was reunited with his daughter after nurses from a hospital in Centreville, Ill., bonded him out of jail. (KTVI)
A group of nurses reportedly bonded a father out of jail after he was arrested for multiple traffic violations while racing his 1-year-old daughter to a hospital in Illinois.
Darius Hinkle, according to KTVI, was traveling at speeds of more than 100 mph as his daughter choked on a penny.
“The first thing in my mind was to get her to the hospital,” he told the station.
But when Hinkle, his wife and daughter arrived at the Touchette Regional Hospital in Centreville, police were waiting for him. He also reportedly admitted he did not have a valid driver’s license.
The daughter was treated and released. Yet by the time the mother got to the jail where Hinkle was being held, another woman was already there to bond him out, KTVI reports.
“She said ‘I’m the nurse from Touchette hospital,'” Donecia Pittman told the station.
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The hospital confirmed that the nurses bonded Hinkle out, although the amount paid wasn’t immediately clear.
“I can’t thank them enough,” Hinkle said.
Fox News’ Michael Sinkewicz contributed to this report.
Source: Fox News National
Brian Rini, the man who claimed to be the missing Illinois boy Timmothy Pitzen, was charged Friday with making false statements to an FBI official.
The FBI announced earlier this week that DNA evidence showed Rini wasn’t who he claimed to be.
This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.
Source: Fox News National
Brian Rini, 23, is accused of posing as Timmothy Pitzen, a 6-year-old boy from Illinois who went missing in 2011. (Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction)
An Ohio man whom authorities said falsely claimed to be Timmothy Pitzen, the Illinois boy who went missing in 2011 at age 6, was found to have a long criminal history and was once psychologically evaluated, according to reports.
Brian Rini, 23, of Medina, Ohio, was spotted in a Newport, Ky. neighborhood early Wednesday by residents who suspected he was trying to steal a neighbor’s car. When they approached Rini, he reportedly told them he was Pitzen, according to police in Sharonville, Ohio.
A DNA test, however, quickly determined that “the person in question is not Timmothy Pitzen,” the FBI’s Louisville field office tweeted.
PERSON WHO CLAIMED TO BE TIMMOTHY PITZEN IS NOT TIMMOTHY PITZEN, FBI SAYS, CITING DNA TEST
Police in Ohio said Rini is well-known to authorities in that state. He was released from prison early last month after serving time for burglarizing and vandalizing a $400,000 Ohio home that was for sale, Chicago’s WGN-TV reported.
Police records cited by the station indicate that Rini had been on authorities’ radar even before the burglary and vandalism. In 2013, Rini’s mental competency to stand trial in Medina County, Ohio, was evaluated but officials determined he was of sound mind. Rini’s brother, however, refuted those claims, telling Cleveland’s FOX 8 that his brother has mental health issues.
TEXAS BOY, 9, MISSING SINCE 2017 FOUND IN FLORIDA
Pitzen’s family said they are heartbroken by the apparent hoax involving Rini. Kara Jacobs, Pitzen’s aunt, said learning that her nephew had not been found was “like reliving the day” he disappeared over again.
This undated photo provided by the Aurora, Ill., Police Department shows Timmothy Pitzen, missing since 2011. (Aurora Police Department via AP)
Pitzen disappeared in 2011 after his 43-year-old mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen, picked him up from school in May 2011. It’s believed she took the boy to a zoo and a water park in Wisconsin before apparently killing herself in a hotel room in Illinois.
Fox News’ Nicole Darrah and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source: Fox News National
Police groups from in and around Chicago called Thursday for Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx to step down, saying at a news conference they no longer had confidence in her ability to competently execute her duties in office.
The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and associations of police chiefs throughout Cook County voted to call for Foxx to resign, but they cautioned it was not only due to the Jussie Smollett case that has rocked the Windy City.
“This is not just about the Jussie Smollett case, which undermined the public confidence and law enforcement’s faith in Cook County criminal justice system…this is about many cases that have gone un-prosecuted or had charges reduced, especially assaults against police officers,” said Chicago FOP President Kevin Graham.
The FOP has requested a federal investigation into her conduct, Graham added.
Speaking to reporters, Graham cited the murder of an off-duty Chicago police officer, John Rivera, 23, last week in the city’s River North neighborhood.
“The persons that were involved in that case, one of them should have been in jail at the time he [Rivera] was murdered, but because the charges were reduced, he was out on the street and murdered a Chicago police officer,” Graham said.
But the kickstart for the movement to remove Foxx, who took office in 2016, began when her office dropped 16 felony counts of filing a false police report for “Empire” actor Jussie Smollet in an otherwise opaque and questionable proceeding. The move outraged Chicago Police Chief Eddie Johnson and then-Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, who called it “a whitewash of justice.”
The “Empire” actor was accused of faking a racist, anti-gay attack on himself. He agreed to let the city keep his $10,000 bail. Smollett maintains his innocence and insists he was attacked.
The calls for Foxx’s resignation came on the same day Smollett was to pay more than $130,000 to Chicago for costs the city incurred investigating his allegedly staged hoax. Smollet had seven days to pay back the city, per a letter delivered to his legal team from city police officials.
An internal email obtained by Fox News from Foxx’s office asked assistant state’s attorneys to dig for any examples to bolster her claim that the dropped charges were not uncommon or unique.
Other groups have echoed the police frustrations. The Illinois Prosecutor’s Bar Association called the manner in which the Smollet case was handled “abnormal and unfamiliar.”
MAXINE WATERS SAYS IT WAS ‘CORRECT THING’ FOR SMOLLETT CHARGES TO BE DROPPED
The appearance of alleged impropriety is compounded by the fact that this case was not on the regularly scheduled court call, the public had no reasonable notice or opportunity to view these proceedings, and the dismissal was done abruptly at what has been called an “emergency” hearing,” an IPBA statement read.
Foxx has defended her decision and has not indicated she has any intention of resigning.
Brendan Shiller, a Chicago lawyer supportive of Foxx but not representing her, told Fox News, “They are using the Jussie Smollet case as a thin veil to protest the Cook County State’s Attorney’s criminal justice reform, and as an excuse to push a racist agenda of locking up black and brown people for even the most minimalist of crimes.”
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He defended her record amid the torrent of protest and rancor from the police community.
“Since Foxx took office, violent crime in the County is down in part because her office is focusing on violent crime and resolutions that are alternative to incarceration–but law enforcement homicide clearance rates are still abysmal, because a large portion of law enforcement cares more about locking up black men than they care about solving violent crimes,” Shiller said.
Fox News’ Matt Finn in Chicago contributed to this report.
Source: Fox News National
Former cop and convicted wife-killer Drew Peterson said in a new interview his current federal digs are an upgrade from his previous prison confines and shared his regrets about getting married — though, quite a few people probably wish Peterson had remained single.
Peterson, speaking exclusively to FOX32 in a phone interview from federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, joked that life inside the maximum security prison is like “living the dream.”
“It was dirty,” Peterson said of the Illinois state prison he was previously in. “The mattresses I had, the pillow I had, you wouldn’t put your dog on it. It was terrible. Urine and defecation spread on the walls.”
The 65-year-old called that facility a “horrible, horrible place.”
Former police sergeant Drew Peterson is pictured in this booking photo, released by the Will County Sheriff’s Office in Illinois, United States on May 8, 2009. (REUTERS/Will County Sheriff’s Office)
“Then I come to the federal place and it’s comparatively like a day care center,” he told FOX32.
DREW PETERSON’S MURDER CONVICTION UPHELD BY ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT
The former police sergeant from the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook is serving a 38-year sentence in the 2004 death of ex-wife Kathleen Savio. He’ll follow that with 40 additional years after a conviction in 2016 on allegations that he plotted to kill the prosecutor who put him behind bars.
Officials said Peterson was moved from an Illinois state prison to the federal facility after the threat to kill Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow suggested he was a threat to prison security.
I would have stayed a bachelor for sure. It’s just like every time I fell in love with somebody and tried to make a life with them, things didn’t work out.
He first came to national attention in 2007 after his fourth wife, Stacy, vanished from the couple’s home in Bolingbrook, Ill. She has never been found and no one has been charged in connection with the case. However, Peterson was recorded telling fellow inmate Antonio Smith he was worried that Glasgow would eventually charge him in the case.
Kathleen Savio was found dead in her bathtub in 2004. Her death was initially ruled an accident, but Glasgow ordered the case re-opened following Stacy Peterson’s disappearance.
During FOX32’s two separate 15-minute interviews, it was apparent that, since he was originally arrested in May 2009, Peterson has not wavered regarding his innocence.
“I didn’t murder Kathy and I didn’t murder Stacy,” Peterson told FOX 32.
DREW PETERSON REPORTEDLY ATTACKED IN PRISON
Peterson, who claims that Stacy ran off with another man, told FOX32 there’s still a chance she’ll still show up.
In this May 8, 2009 file photo, former Bolingbrook, Ill., police officer Drew Peterson arrives for court in Joliet, Ill. AP Photo/M. Spencer Green (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
“Well, there’s been all kinds of cases of a woman coming back years after, as much as 10 or 12 years afterward,” he said.
He added that he’s had no prison romances with women inside or outside the penitentiary, and revealed one thing he wished he may have done differently over the years.
“I would have stayed a bachelor for sure,” he told FOX32. “It’s just like every time I fell in love with somebody and tried to make a life with them, things didn’t work out.”
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The one-time Bolingbrook “Police Officer of the Year” said he’s still in good health and makes $20 working in the prison laundry. When he’s not watching sitcoms and movies, he told FOX32 he keeps in touch with his 6 kids, two of whom have recently graduated from “well-known” colleges.
Peterson, who is eligible for parole in 2081, is still appealing his murder-for-hire conviction in the state courts. He told FOX32 he blames his defense attorneys for bungling his defenses and plans to challenge the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision to uphold his murder conviction in federal courts.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source: Fox News National
DNA testing was ordered Thursday on a teen who emerged in Kentucky claiming to be the long-missing Timmothy Pitzen and who told officials he’d just escaped the kidnappers who’d held him hostage for more than seven years.
The teen was located in Newport, Ky., early Wednesday by residents who spotted him in the neighborhood and suspected he might be looking to steal something. When neighbors approached him, he told them an incredible story.
Timmothy was reported missing in May 2011. His mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen, picked up the then-6-year-old from school in Aurora, Ill. and took him for a two-day trip to a zoo and a water park.
Then, Fry-Pitzen killed herself in a Rockford hotel room.
Timmothy was nowhere to be found, but a cryptic note, believed written by Fry-Pitzen and found in the room with her body, claimed she left her son with people who would care for him.
“You’ll never find him,” the note read, according to FOX19.
Timmothy Pitzen, left, was 6 years old when he vanished in 2011. The photo of him on the right provided by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, shows him age-progressed to 13 years old. (Aurora Police Department)
On Wednesday, Sharon Hall, who said she spotted the 14-year-old boy wandering the block, told FOX19 she initially thought he was trying to steal her neighbor’s car.
“From out the window, I couldn’t see who was standing to the curb. But I looked out and came back in and…there was a young man standing by my neighbor’s car,” Hall said. “…The way he was acting, he was fidgety, he was moving around, he was looking in her car.”
Hall said she eventually got in touch with her neighbor and found two other women already speaking to the teen. The women called police after the teen told them he was Pitzen and had “just escaped from two kidnappers” who held him hostage for seven years.
“We have this child who says he ran away…says he was kidnapped. And we found it. It looks like back in 2011 he was kidnapped or abducted. Last name is Pitzen…first name is Timmothy. If you Google it, it will pop right up,” a Campbell County dispatcher said.
The teen described his captors as two men with bodybuilder physiques and said they were traveling in a Ford SUV with Wisconsin license plates, Sharonville Police Department wrote in an incident report.
“One had black curly hair, Mt. Dew shirt and jeans & has a spider web tattoo on his neck. The other was short in stature and had a snake tattoo on his arms,” the report stated.
AMERICAN ABDUCTED IN UGANDA TOURIST PARK, HELD FOR $500G RANSOM
The teen told police he and his kidnappers were staying in a Red Roof Inn in the Cincinnati, Ohio area when he managed to escape, running across a bridge until he reached Kentucky.
A teen claimed he was Timmothy Pitzen, a now-14-year-old boy who vanished in 2011.
The FBI, Aurora police and several other agencies rushed to meet the 14-year-old on Wednesday to confirm if he really was the missing Illinois boy. The teen was taken to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and authorities ordered a DNA test. Officials hope to have the results at some point Thursday.
“We’ve probably had thousands of tips of him popping up in different areas,” Aurora police Sgt. Bill Rowley said. “We have no idea what we’re driving down there for. It could be Pitzen. It could be a hoax.”
Timmothy’s grandmother, Alana Anderson, told WISN-TV on Wednesday that authorities have told the family “very little.”
“We just know a 14-year-old boy was found and went to the police,” Anderson said. “We don’t want to get our hopes up and our family’s hopes up until we know something. We just don’t want to get our hopes up. We’ve had false reports and false hopes before.”
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Anderson also told FOX19 she’s “very cautiously hopeful” the teen is her grandson.
“Well I’m very hopeful that it is him and that he is okay and he’s been in a good place when he was gone,” she said. “…If it turns out to be him, we’ll be thrilled.”
“We never stopped looking for him, thinking about him, and that we love him and that we will do everything for him to get back to a good life,” she said when asked what her message would be to Timmothy.
FBI Louisville also said in a tweet Wednesday: “FBILouisville and @FBICincinnati are actively coordinating with the Newport PD, @CincyPD, Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office, and @AuroraPoliceIL on a missing child investigation. There will be no further statement made on this matter until we have additional information.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source: Fox News National
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