Shane Sleeper – Photo: Cook County Sheriff’s Office.
Chicago police have arrested a man who was accidentally released from custody even though he threatened to carry out an attack against Chicago gay bars, reports The Chicago Tribune.
Shane Sleeper, 31, was apprehended without incident on Thursday at around 12:30 p.m. local time, according to the Cook County Sheriff’s Office. He had originally been arrested in February for six separate cases of harassment, after threatening to carry out attacks against various gay bars in Chicago’s Lake View and Boystown neighborhoods.
He also allegedly said that “Orlando will come to Chicago,” a reference to the Pulse nightclub massacre. When police confronted him about the alleged threats, he fled. But police eventually arrested him and charged him with misdemeanor charges of harassment, assault, and resisting a police officer.
Sleeper later appeared in court, where the state’s attorney’s office dropped the misdemeanor charges against him, and indicted him on felony charges of falsely making a terrorist threat, a hate crime, harassment through electronic communications, criminal trespassing, stalking, assault, false personation of a police officer and telephone harassment, according to state’s attorney’s office spokesman Robert Foley.
At the hearing, Sleeper was ordered to be held without bail. However, there was a miscommunication between the sheriff’s office, the state attorney’s office, and the Office of the Clerk of the Court.
Sophia Ansari, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office, said that the office had only received notification about the dismissal of the misdemeanor charges and not about the felony indictment. She also told NBC Chicago that the Clerk of the Court’s records did not reflect the new charges. Absent any additional information, the sheriff’s office released Sleeper.
But the State’s Attorney’s office maintains that the sheriff’s office is responsible for the custody of defendants, releasing a statement that it “does not play any role in the transfer of paperwork between the clerk and sheriff. Any questions about what happened with the paperwork should be directed to those two agencies.”
The Office of the Clerk of the Court agrees with that assessment, releasing a statement to ABC 7 News stating: “It is the Clerk’s Office’s understanding that the Sheriff’s Office’s normal processes and procedures are to do thorough reviews of judge’s orders on ALL OF A DEFENDANT’S CASES prior to a defendant’s release. It appears that the Sheriff did not follow its normal procedures for all of Shane Sleeper’s cases.”
Whatever the reason for the miscommunication, law enforcement officials realized their mistake, and sent out an alert seeking to enlist the public’s help in locating and re-apprehending Sleeper.
Sleeper first came to authorities’ attention after he was temporarily taken into custody on Feb. 3 for “making a shooting gesture” at a manager of Sidetrack, a popular gay bar. He was charged with assault and released on his own recognizance.
But when police looked into Sleeper’s background, they discovered that he had sent multiple emails, phone texts, or Facebook messages threatening to carry out violence at Sidetrack and at Roscoe’s Tavern, another gay bar. Police also allege that Sleeper harassed other individuals between 2016 and February 2018, prompting them to bring the initial misdemeanor charges against him on Feb. 20, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.
A Manhattan jury convicted three men of murder for drugging two gay bar patrons as part of an elaborate robbery scheme, leading to their deaths.
The three men -- 37-year-old Jayqwan Hamilton, 32-year-old Jacob Barroso, and 36-year-old Robert DeMaio -- were also convicted of robbery and conspiracy for the drugging scheme.
Prosecutors alleged that the trio, along with other accomplices, would lurk outside Manhattan bars near closing time, hoping to encounter patrons -- primarily young men -- who were intoxicated after a night of drinking.
After chatting up their victims, the men would drug them with a fentanyl-laced cocktail and wait until they were incapacitated. The men would then steal victims' wallets and use facial recognition technology on their smartphones to gain access to bank accounts, which were then drained of money. They used those funds, as well as the victims' credit cards, to purchase various items, including liquor, sneakers, and designer clothes and accessories.
Defying the adage that the lady needs no introduction, Bruce David Klein’s captivating documentary Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story extends a four-minute introduction to its larger-than-life subject Liza Minnelli before the film truly enters the breach, touching down on June 22, 1969, the day her mother Judy Garland died.
In the midst of the preamble performance clips -- presenting Liza as a gangly ingenue onstage with her mother, and as a superstar commanding the world’s stages on her own -- Klein runs amusing outtakes of Liza, present-day, sitting for interviews but not at all passively. Dressed in head-to-toe black, her trademark pixie cut topped by a newsboy cap, she commands the room tenaciously, directing the cameraman on how to shoot her.
Donnell Jetters, of Waco, Texas, was arrested after he fired a gun at a relative who came out as gay.
On March 14, around 9 p.m., police officers were dispatched to a home in the North Lake Waco section of the city in response to a report of a disturbance involving a gun.
The victim in the case called 9-1-1 after escaping from the home but returned to the scene shortly after officers arrived. Investigators discovered that Jetters and the victim, who was a family member, had gotten into an argument after the latter came out as gay.
The family member told police they left the residence after hearing Jetters cocking a pistol. They claimed he later pointed the weapon at them while they were fleeing, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
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