An admitted drug addict was arrested July 13 after he was allegedly caught with more than $3,800 in cash, 62 small bags of heroin and a syringe loaded with the narcotic.
According to a department report, police stopped a Volkswagen Passat shortly before 7 p.m. near Thornton’s gas station on Harlem when the driver did not signal that she was making a right turn. While speaking with the driver, a 23-year-old woman from Wisconsin, police noticed that the male passenger in the front seat kept reaching toward a storage compartment in the door. Police asked what the man was hiding and, according to the report, he confessed that he had a syringe.
Authorities recovered the needle and asked if there were drugs in the car. The passenger, 29-year-old John Bailey, of McHenry, told police he had heroin in the vehicle, according to police. In a door compartment, according to the police report, officers recovered 62 small bags of the drug, which Bailey later said he’d bought for $300 at the nearby gas station.
The driver, whose name was not released by investigators, told police a similar story, but said the drugs were bought for $400.
Bailey was charged with possession of a controlled substance, possession of paraphernalia and with manufacturing and delivering a controlled substance.
Tough night for taxi drivers
In separate incidents Sunday, cab drivers in Forest Park twice called on police during the early morning hours when their passengers became unruly.
It was shortly after midnight when a female driver told authorities that 44-year-old Brian Walsh, of Forest Park, refused to pay his $37 fare after being driven from Lombard. According to police, Walsh was “highly intoxicated” and had attempted to leave the cab several times, at one point offering up $2 and telling the driver that was all she was getting. According to the police report, he also proposed having sex with the cab driver.
Walsh was arrested for theft of services and possession of drug paraphernalia. The department report says police recovered a marijuana pipe from him.
About an hour later, police were called to the 7200 block of Circle where a taxi driver complained that he had been dispatched to bring someone to the airport, but another man got into his car and refused to leave when the driver tried to explain that he could not accommodate the request. The passenger, Armirious Coleman, 32, of Bellwood, pulled his fist back, according to the police report, as though to strike the taxi driver, prompting the driver to jump out of the cab to avoid being punched. Coleman then ran up to him and spit in his face, the report said.
The suspect was charged with one count of battery and one count of simple assault.
Patron swipes wallet
A River Forest woman was having a drink with her boyfriend at Kevil’s, 7228 Circle, when the pair stepped outside to have a smoke. To hold their place at the bar, the woman left her wallet, keys and a cellphone only to return moments later to find her wallet was missing, according to a department report.
When police were called to the scene at about 11:30 p.m. July 14, the woman pointed to another couple that had been sitting nearby as the suspected culprits. Police attempted to talk with Phillip Matthews, 44, of Chicago, but the apparently intoxicated suspect became combative. He was handcuffed and during a quick search, according to the police report, officers found a red leather wallet tucked into his waistband. A driver’s license and other identification inside matched that of the woman who said her wallet had been stolen.
Matthews was arrested and charged with theft.
Barkeep faced with blade
The owner of O’Sullivan’s tavern told police that he had been attacked by a man with a knife after a confrontation over the tab escalated into a fight, according to police. The bar owner wasn’t injured by the suspect, but the man carrying the weapon, 21-year-old David Brooks of Oak Park, was bleeding from his left hand. It wasn’t clear in the department report how Brooks may have injured his hand.
It was just after 2 a.m. Sunday when police were called to the bar at 7244 Madison about a disturbance. When they arrived, according to a department report, they found Brooks yelling obscenities at the bar owner and behaving in an aggressive manner. The knife was not in view, but police recovered the item from his pants pocket, the report said. Brooks continued to curse, now at the officers, and began threatening the police with legal action.
Brooks was charged with battery, aggravated assault and disorderly conduct.
These items were taken from the records of the Forest Park Police Department between July 12 and July 19, and represent only a portion of the incidents to which police responded. Anyone named in this report has only been charged with a crime. The cases have not been adjudicated.
-Compiled by Josh Adams
