A Forest Park Walmart employee allegedly stole $7,814 worth of electronics from the store throughout January and into early February. 

A store employee made the complaint after discovering that four iPhones were missing from a locked room. The only way to access the room was using a key kept in the store manager’s office. This led her to review the security footage for Feb. 7, which showed the alleged thief, a 65-year-old Chicago man, going into the manager’s office, taking the key and opening the storage room. The witness reviewed the security footage as far back as Jan. 16 and saw that the alleged thief went into the storage room nine times, allegedly taking eight Samsung tablets, one iPad, eight Apple stylus pencils and four AirPods. 

The employee believed that the alleged thief may have committed other thefts.

As he was taken into custody, the alleged thief asked if the police could retrieve his belongings from the employe locker. The officers found that the lunch box contained an unopened box of Drakkar Noir cologne, which also came from the store inventory. 

The alleged thief said he only took two iPhones, even after he was told about the surveillance footage. He was charged with one count of retail theft.

Burglary from vehicle

A Loyola University student got his stolen MacBook back thanks to the laptop’s real-time tracking function, but he wasn’t able to recover his wallet.

On Feb. 10, at around 1 p.m., the victim visited his girlfriend on the 300 block of Elgin Avenue. When he went back to his car, a black 2022 Chevrolet Equinox, he discovered that his backpack was missing from the back seat. The backpack had his MacBook, an iPad, his hospital IDs, “various medications” and a wallet containing his driver’s license and bank cards, among other things. 

The victim was able to use an application on his phone to track the location of the MacBook in real time. It was pinging at the Chicago/Oak Park border, near the intersection of North and Ridgeland avenues. A police officer checked the nearby pawn shops, but that turned up nothing.

The tracker continued to show the MacBook slowly moving east on North Avenue, into Chicago’s Austin neighborhood. The officer and the victim followed the signal and spotted a pedestrian walking on the north side of North Avenue, near the North Austin branch library, wearing the victim’s backpack.

The police officer ordered the suspect to drop the bag. The suspect did so and immediately took off running east, toward Central Avenue. The officer asked if the victim wanted to press charges. The victim said he did not, and the officer let the suspect go.

After checking the backpack more thoroughly, the victim discovered that his wallet was still missing. 

Police chase

Forest Park police officers helped stop a vehicle that was allegedly stolen from Chicago and may have been involved in several burglaries. 

On Feb. 10 at 8:35 p.m., while on routine patrol, officers were alerted that a Chicago Police Department helicopter was tracking a white 2022 Jeep Cherokee heading west on the Eisenhower Expressway near the Austin Boulevard bridge. The officers drove onto the expressway at Harlem Avenue, but didn’t spot the Jeep, and the Illinois State Police units nearby advised them that the vehicle was further east. 

The two police forces worked together to pull the Jeep over. The driver, a 26-year-old Chicago man, and a passenger, a 21-year-old Bellwood woman, were charged with one count of criminal trespass to a vehicle. 

These items were obtained from police reports filed by the Forest Park Police Department, Feb. 6-12, and represent a portion of the incidents to which police responded. Unless otherwise indicated, anybody named in these reports has only been charged with a crime. These cases have not been adjudicated.

Compiled by Igor Studenkov