Waterman man charged with attempted murder of 71-year-old relative in Big Rock Township
An 18-year-old man from Waterman has been charged with attempted murder after what police said was a domestic disturbance that involved a threat to kill a 71-year-old family member on Saturday in Big Rock Township, according to a press release from the Kane County Sheriff's Office.
Koda Uebel, 18, of Waterman, has been charged with one count of first degree attempted murder, two counts of aggravated domestic battery, one count of aggravated battery causing great bodily harm to a person 60 years old or older, two counts of aggravated battery to a peace officer, two counts of domestic battery, one count of resisting an officer and one county of possession or consumption of alcohol by a minor, according to the release.
At around 12:06 a.m. on Saturday, deputies responded to a call about a possible domestic disturbance involving two family members at a home on the 300 block of Lincoln Avenue in Big Rock Township, according to the release.
Deputies said that through a locked front door they saw a man, later identified as Uebel, punching, slapping and kicking a woman, as well as threatening to kill her, the release said.
The deputies forced entry into the home and assisted the woman to safety, the release said, but the man is then accused of attacking the deputies. A Taser was used to gain control of the man, and, during that time, the man bit one of the deputies, but ultimately was restrained, according to the release.
The woman, 71, was taken to Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva with serious injuries, the release said. She remains hospitalized but in stable condition, officials said.
The injured deputy and Uebel were evaluated at Delnor and medically cleared, according to the release. The deputy was released that night, per the news release, and Uebel was taken into the custody of the Kane County Sheriff's Office.
Uebel will have a pretrial release detention hearing on June 5.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Yahoo
'Wrench Attacks' Are Shocking and Violent. It's Only Going to Get Worse.
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Late last month, a shoeless and injured cryptocurrency investor fled from a posh Manhattan townhouse and approached the NYPD with a mortifying story: He'd just escaped 17 straight days of torture, having been held in SoHo and peed upon, forced to smoke crack, pistol-whipped, shocked with a Taser, cut with a saw, and dangled over a ledge. All because two fellow crypto enthusiasts, whom he personally knew, desired access to his multimillion-dollar Bitcoin fortune—and were willing to do anything to make him give up the password to his virtual wallet. With the information provided by this battered trader—a 28-year-old Italian named Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan—the authorities quickly took the accused culprits, John Woeltz and William Duplessie, into custody. Per police reports, Carturan and Woeltz had ties to an unnamed New York crypto hedge fund; the latter had often 'picked on' the former and, eventually, a disagreement over money led Carturan to fly back to Italy. Woeltz, who'd been spending time with Duplessie partying hard and splurging generously—including on that 17-floor, $30,000-a-month SoHo townhouse—persuaded Carturan to return to NYC early last month and allegedly hired an off-duty NYPD officer to pick him up from the airport on May 6.(It's unknown whether the cop knew what was about to happen.) According to Carturan's account, he only escaped after agreeing to give up the passkey to his Bitcoin wallet, claiming it was stored on his laptop; when his tormenters left him behind to fetch the computer, Carturan bolted from the premises. The NYC torture scheme was just the latest example of a 'wrench attack,' where a thief employs brutal physical violence in order to gain access to a target's virtual cryptocurrency stashes. The phrase hails from a 2009 strip from the popular webcomic xkcd, making the point that any common thief could break into a user's encrypted software simply by battering the owner with a $5 wrench 'until he tells us the password.' It's not a new phenomenon—but these days, it's a troublingly common one. On the same day Carturan left his captives, the crypto-crime watchdog group TRM Labs put out a report on the recent uptick in wrench attacks, noting that such acts 'have escalated in both frequency and severity,' typically involving 'high levels of violence that are extremely traumatic for the victims to endure.' Ari Redbord, a former federal prosecutor who now heads global policy for TRM Labs, gave me a blunt explanation for this surge: 'We've seen the price of Bitcoin double in the last year or so. Criminals tend to go where the money is. These aren't cybercriminals. These aren't hackers. They don't need sophisticated tools.' A few days later, longtime software engineer and Bitcoin maximalist Jameson Lopp gave a detailed presentation on the escalation in wrench attacks at the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas. After kicking off with a reference to that xkcd comic, Lopp deployed various graphs of reported wrench attacks over the years, noting that such assaults are still relatively rare compared with other crypto-related crimes (such as hacking or phishing), but that they do tend to spike whenever Bitcoin's value balloons rapidly, like during the crypto craze of 2021. This year, Bitcoin's value has reached all-time highs—and 2025 is on pace to see a record amount of wrench attacks worldwide. Lopp emphasized that the total number will still be 'relatively small'—the previous record-breaking year, 2021, only recorded about 35 attacks, most of them in the U.S. But the details common to these crimes are terrifying enough to warrant extra caution for crypto holders: home invasions, kidnapping, drugging. And, Lopp warned, 'a decent number of these also involve torture.' Bitcoin Conference attendees likely found Lopp's presentation valuable, not least because many crypto investors are reportedly growing more fearful. The Wall Street Journal recently spoke with anonymous 'members of the crypto community' who 'say they are turning their Instagram profiles private and are trying to remove their physical addresses, and those of their families, from public records.' Other crypto enthusiasts are also training in hand-to-hand combat—perhaps not incidental to the fact that, as Lopp stated, many wrench-attack survivors lacked adequate home-security or self-defense tools. Again, such events are rare. But for those who go through them, they're scarring. Just last week, two Russian crypto executives were kidnapped by Chechens in Buenos Aires and forced to pay $43,000 in ransom before the perpetrators fled. A few weeks before that, a 30-year-old American tourist in London was drugged by a man who claimed to be his Uber driver; the kidnapper only let him out once the American gave up his crypto-wallet passkey. In late November, a Las Vegas–based investor left a local crypto conference and was kidnapped by three armed and masked robbers right as he reached home; they extorted him for $4.8 million worth of tokens, then abandoned him in a desert area 26 miles from the Nevada border. That same month, WonderFI CEO Dean Skurka was kidnapped in Toronto, held for a $1 million ransom, then freed when the sum was paid. There are still more recent incidents that I have not rounded up—or that, more chillingly, have not been made public. But a series of repeated kidnappings in France alone (which, in at least two cases, ended with the captive's finger getting cut off) were enough to spur the country's interior minister to convene a group of local crypto entrepreneurs and promise extra protection. (Redbord suspects that the revitalized presence of organized-crime syndicates in France has contributed to the increase of wrench attacks there, as he told me.) Bennett Tomlin and Cas Piancey, reporters for the crypto news site Protos and co-hosts of the Crypto Critics' Corner podcast, told me that the targeted wrench attacks may come down to the fact that fewer and fewer people hoard more and more digital currencies, juicing the value of their stashes. 'There's a pretty significant portion of high-net-worth individuals who have some portion of their money in crypto,' Piancey said, 'and that becomes a much easier target for a robber than demanding all the cash in their house, because there probably isn't any.' The often-public nature of crypto ownership—social media boasting, digital-influencer status, conference attendance, inconsistent cybersecurity measures—also makes it easier to target the most outspoken enthusiasts. That's especially the case at large in-person conferences with rich and powerful registrants like Bitcoin 2025. Unlike traditional means of protecting and storing wealth, like physical banks whose accounts are protected with sophisticated security measures, crypto holders carry immense, untraceable wealth by way of the passkeys to their crypto wallets, whether those are hosted online or stored within a flash drive. When you are your own bank, you risk being broken into like one. It becomes even riskier when any high-profile crypto holders gather together. Tomlin mentioned the fallout from last summer's Brussels Ethereum conference, where multiple attendees were robbed. 'You don't hear about this stuff happening at big conferences that involve bankers,' Piancey explained. 'Someone who has $100 million in crypto is a more appealing target for that kind of attack than someone who has $100 million in the banking system, because one of those is going to be a lot easier to quickly take and hold on to.' In other words: A heavily deregulated and public-facing sector that boasts relatively few buyers—who are even richer as a result—can become a sensible target for an otherwise technologically unsophisticated criminal who knows how to browse social media. At Bitcoin 2025, Jameson Lopp also noted this tendency and gave some advice to his audience: 'Shut up and stop flaunting your wealth.'
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Yahoo
WA looks to tighten compliance under police accountability law
(Getty Images) Washington state auditors have started investigating whether local police departments are properly reporting officer misconduct. As part of police accountability measures passed in 2021, the Legislature required law enforcement agencies to report to the state Criminal Justice Training Commission when officers leave the department for any reason, use force that results in death or serious injury, are charged with a crime or are found to commit certain misconduct. The law also required departments to continue investigations even if an officer resigns before the probe is finished. This is meant to ensure 'bad-apple' officers who should lose their state certification don't slip through the cracks. Losing those credentials blocks officers from working as police in the state, even if they quit their job to evade formal discipline. The Criminal Justice Training Commission suspected agencies weren't reporting misconduct as they should have. So it requested the state auditor's office look into compliance. Officials see the resulting audits as a teaching moment on the new reporting requirements. The objective is to increase public trust and improve transparency. 'This isn't like a gotcha, it's not a punishment,' said Kimberly Bliss, the commission's assistant director focused on certification. 'This is an educational piece for us to make sure that agencies across the board learn what they're supposed to be doing.' Last month, Bliss and Michael Huynh, from the state auditor's office, led a presentation on the audits at the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs conference in Spokane. Afterward, police officials told Bliss they realized they hadn't reported correctly. The first two new audits, of the Renton and Des Moines police departments, both showed missteps. After reviewing department records, auditors found Des Moines didn't report three of four sustained misconduct allegations. That conduct included violations of the state's controversial pursuit law that lawmakers later rolled back, wrongful use of a Taser and improper handling of drug evidence. Des Moines Police Chief Ted Boe blamed the lack of reporting on the law being unclear. For example, while some parts of the statute are more specific, one provision says officers can be decertified for failing 'to meet the ethical and professional standards required of a peace officer or corrections officer.' In response, the Criminal Justice Training Commission agreed to develop guidance on what conduct falls under that umbrella. Des Moines also notified the state training commission of all officers who had left, but four of those notices came well after the 15-day window in the law. Meanwhile, in Renton, auditors found the department didn't report that two officers were involved in a use of force incident in 2022 until learning of the audit. The chief said this was an oversight. Renton also was a little late on reporting two officer separations. For both departments, the auditor's office recommended outlining the reporting process in agency policy. 'One thing we found was that one person would be responsible for notifications, and if they didn't do it, no one knew,' said Huynh, a program manager with the auditor's office. Police accountability advocates see failing to comply with the law as a symptom of a systemic problem. 'This is not an oversight. It's a pattern. A culture. One where data is withheld, timelines are ignored, and truth is treated like a suggestion,' Nickeia Hunter, whose brother was killed by police, said in an email. 'Until truth is demanded and enforced, we will remain stuck in a cycle where transparency is performative and justice is optional.' Next up for these new state audits are the Kitsap County Sheriff's Office and the police wing of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. Auditors will continue looking into a pair of agencies at a time indefinitely.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Sergeant hit by train after officers were 'mislead'
A police officer was struck by a train after "misleading" information was given to officers trying to help a vulnerable man on a railway line, an inquest has heard. Sgt Graham Saville was hit after he was deployed to the railway line near Newark, Nottinghamshire, on 24 August 2023. He survived the impact but died in hospital five days later, a hearing at Nottingham's Council House was told. On Wednesday, the inquest heard officers at the scene were informed Network Rail would be contacted to stop the train, but the call was delayed by five minutes before Sgt Saville was struck. The hearing was told two officers attending the call with Sgt Saville repeatedly told the police dispatcher that the distressed man, referred to in court as Patient C, was near the railway line and had threatened to walk in front of a train. No contact was made with Network Rail to stop the train until 20 seconds before Sgt Saville was struck at 19:08 BST, coroner Laurinda Bower said. Ms Bower said the two officers were told the police control room was "on to" National Rail and had them "ready to go in case" Patient C went on to the tracks, but "the phone had not been picked up". Jack Richardson, who was working as a Nottinghamshire Police dispatcher for the Newark area that evening, told the court the call to stop trains on the line "should have been made sooner". The coroner asked him if the reassurances given to the officers were "misleading", to which the witness replied: "It could be interpreted that way by the officers, yes". Ms Bower said to Mr Richardson: "It seems to me that there was a five minute delay in seeking to make contact with Network Rail, between officers saying he is looking like he [Patient C] is going to go on to the line... then five minutes lapsing before anyone picks up the phone to get on to Network Rail. "It limits the time Network Rail has got to take any effective action." The witness said: "I was not aware that we should be calling Network Rail prior to that. It was my understanding that a call should be made when someone enters a rail network." Mr Richardson agreed it was "obvious" that it would take more than a few seconds to stop a train moving at a speed of up to 125mph. He added: "That call should have been made sooner. Given the new training that's been brought in, Network Rail should be advised, informed, as soon as there is a first mention of someone heading towards the railway network." The inquest had previously heard Patient C had called East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) to say he had overdosed on caffeine and he was was walking towards the railway line, near Hollowdyke Lane in Balderton, with the intention of harming himself. The hearing had been told Patient C had a history of "fighting with police" and Sgt Saville had attended because he was trained to use a Taser. The hearing continues. Additional reporting by Dan Martin If you have been affected by the contents of the article, support is available through the BBC Action Line website. Follow BBC Nottingham on Facebook, on X, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@ or via WhatsApp on 0808 100 2210. Train hit officer just before 'stay off' line order Officer hit by train after being called to help man HM Courts and Tribunals Service
