Latest news with #Carpentersville
CBS News
27-05-2025
- General
- CBS News
Pair charged with hate crime in attack on lesbian at McDonald's in Carpentersville, Illinois
A man and a 16-year-old boy have been indicted on hate crime charges, accused of attacking a woman at a McDonald's in Carpentersville, Illinois, because she is a lesbian. John Kammrad, 19, has been charged with three counts of aggravated battery, one count of hate crime, and one count of mob action, according to the Kane County State's Attorney's office. A 16-year-old boy also has been charged with hate crime, mob action, and aggravated battery. His name was not released because he is a juvenile. Kady Grass, who is from Carpentersville but now lives in Wisconsin, has said she was visiting the McDonald's at 1660 S. Kennedy Dr. in Carpentersville with her 13-year-old cousin on May 13, after the teen's choir concert. She said a group of strangers started harassing her as she left the restroom — using anti-gay slurs toward her. When she walked away, she said they followed. "I just told my cousin to look forward. 'Don't say anything. Don't give them a reason to talk to us again,'" said Grass. Grass acknowledges she then told the strangers she is a lesbian and flicked her wrist at them. Police said witnesses and surveillance video show two people attacked her. Prosecutors said Kammrad and a 16-year-old accomplice beat Grass and kicked her in the head. Grass was left with a fractured nose, a hemorrhage on her eye, and PTSD after the attack. "I genuinely think that their plan was to kill me, and that they didn't care if they ended my life that day," Grass said. Kammrad originally was charged only with two counts of aggravated battery and one count of mob action when he was arrested last week, but Grass had called for hate crime charges to be added. "How it started was because I'm a lesbian — just because I walked into the woman's bathroom, and I looked the way I look," Grass said. Last week, Kane County prosecutors confirmed they were still weighing possible hate crime charges. "Like all cases we handle, my office filed these charges following a thorough investigation and an unbiased review of the facts. These allegations are serious and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," Kane County State's Attorney Jamie Mosser said in a statement on Tuesday. "Everyone deserves to feel safe in public spaces, and no one should be attacked because of their gender identity or sexual orientation, as is alleged in this case. We must make it clear that Kane County is a community that welcomes all." Kammrad is being held at the DuPage County Jail on separate charges in DuPage County, and is due back in court in Kane County on June 27. The video above is from an earlier report.
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Yahoo
Felony charges filed after fight sparked by derogatory remarks at suburban McDonald's: police
The Brief A woman was seriously injured in a May 13 altercation at a Carpentersville McDonald's after two males allegedly made derogatory remarks, police said. The confrontation turned physical, and the woman was hospitalized with severe injuries; she has since been released. A juvenile and an adult face multiple felony charges, including aggravated battery causing bodily harm; both have been taken into custody. CARPENTERSVILLE, Ill. - Two males are facing felony charges after making derogatory remarks about a woman's sexual orientation and injuring her in a fight at a Carpentersville McDonald's, police said. What we know The incident happened Tuesday, May 13, at the McDonald's at 1660 S. Kennedy Drive. According to Carpentersville police, an altercation began when the two suspects made derogatory comments about the woman's sexual orientation as they passed by her. The confrontation escalated into a physical fight involving all three individuals, police said. The woman sustained serious injuries and was taken to a nearby hospital. She has since been released, authorities said. Charges Filed Following an investigation with the Kane County State's Attorney's Office, multiple felony charges were filed against the two males. One is a juvenile, and the other is an adult. Their names have not been released. Police said the juvenile turned himself in on May 16, and the adult was arrested on May 17. Both face several charges, including aggravated battery causing bodily harm, a Class 3 felony. What they're saying "This incident underscores the importance of addressing violence and discrimination within our community. The Carpentersville Police Department remains committed to ensuring public safety and promoting respect for all individuals," the department said in a statement.
CTV News
17-05-2025
- Politics
- CTV News
Device that makes semi-automatic rifles fire quicker allowed by Trump administration
Semi-automatic rifles on display at R Guns on April 29, 2023, in Carpentersville, Illinois. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images via CNN Newsource) U.S. President Donald Trump's administration agreed on Friday to permit the sale of a device that allows for semi-automatic rifles to be fired quicker, a decision that gun control activists say paves the way for more mass shootings. The Department of Justice announced the agreement as part of a settlement between the federal government and gun manufacturer Rare Breed Triggers, in litigation brought by the Biden administration. 'This Department of Justice believes that the 2nd Amendment is not a second-class right,' Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in the statement. 'And we are glad to end a needless cycle of litigation with a settlement that will enhance public safety.' Forced-reset triggers (FRT) allow a semi-automatic rifle to be fired at an increased rate by automatically resetting the trigger after each shot. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) classified them as illegal machine guns in 2022 under the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934. Machine guns have been heavily regulated by Congress since the NFA was passed, and the manufacture for civilian use was banned completely under the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986, a bill endorsed by the National Rifle Association. The Justice Department brought a lawsuit in New York in 2023 against Rare Breed Triggers, which made and distributed such devices, leading to a court ruling blocking it from selling them. While the case was pending, the National Association of Gun Rights (NAGR) filed a separate lawsuit in Texas challenging the ban and a judge there ruled the ban was unlawful. The latest settlement resolves those disputes and falls in line with Trump's February executive order on protecting the Second Amendment's 'right to bear arms,' the Justice Department said in its statement. 'This decision marks a new era of holding the DOJ and ATF accountable when they trample the rights of law-abiding gun owners,' NAGR President Dudley Brown said in a release. 'We made them give back what they took, and that's a precedent they'll never forget.' The DOJ also said the settlement includes 'agreed-upon conditions' concerning public safety with respect to FRTs, including that Rare Breed will not develop or design FRTs for use in any pistol and will enforce its patents. Rare Breed also agreed to promote the safe and responsible use of its products, the DOJ said. CNN has reached out to Rare Breed Triggers for comment on the settlement. Democratic lawmakers and gun control groups have widely condemned the decision. Vanessa Gonzalez, a Vice President with GIFFORDS, the national gun violence prevention group led by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, said in a statement the Trump administration 'effectively legalized machine guns.' 'This is an incredibly dangerous move that will enable shooters to inflict horrific damage,' Gonzalez said. 'The only people who benefit from these being on the market are the people who will make money from selling them, everyone else will suffer the consequences.' The national gun control advocacy group, Brady United, said the settlement means 'highly dangerous weapons of war can now be purchased anonymously' and without a background check. 'The Trump's Administration's secret settlement with the gun lobby to permit the sale of Forced Reset Triggers will turn already deadly firearms into weapons of mass destruction,' President of Brady, Kris Brown, said in the statement. '(It) is not only an astonishing abuse of power, but undermines decades of sensible government gun safety policy and puts whole communities at immediate serious risk.' Article by Max Rego.
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Yahoo
Detectives' true crime podcast helps dig up breakthrough in case that haunted family: ‘drew audible gasp'
What started as a way for a pair of two Illinois detectives to crowdsource tips to solve decades-old cold cases ended in a shocking discovery. Detectives Andrew Houghton and Matt Vartanian were looking to breathe new life into unsolved cases by launching the true-crime podcast, "Somebody Knows Something," in October 2024 at the request of Elgin Police Department Chief Ana Lalley. Their goal centered around using modern investigative technology to potentially bring closure to local families. "We both kind of looked at each other and said, 'No, I'm not really sure that's for us'," Vartanian told Fox News Digital. "Then we took a step back, were open-minded in our thinking and objective, and thought that this could be a really good vehicle to utilize investigative processes within law enforcement." Missing Woman Found After More Than 60 Years, Sheriff Reveals What Really Happened The pair combed through open cold cases within their area, zeroing in on the disappearance of 23-year-old Karen Schepers in 1983. "Our thought was, depending on whatever case we started with or if we did multiple cases, there may be people that are outside of Illinois and outside of our region that might have known about some of these cases," Vartanian said. "So it was the right thing to be able to get that information out there to be able to get answers for the victims and families." Read On The Fox News App Schepers was enjoying a night of celebratory drinks with coworkers at P.M. Bentley's in Carpentersville, Illinois – located 45 miles outside Chicago. Schepers was the last of the group to leave the bar at approximately 1 a.m. on April 16, 1983, and neither she nor her 1980 Toyota Celica were ever seen again, according to the Elgin Police Department. Body Of Missing Washington State Grandmother Found Buried Under Shed Partially Encased In Concrete Even though the community had countless theories of what may have happened to Schepers, including the possibility something happened to her on the way home or when she arrived at her destination, the case ran cold. Schepers' disappearance remained an open investigation for 41 years, and was briefly revisited by the Illinois State Police in the late 1980s and again by investigators in 2010. "In 2008 [and] 2009, we did a bunch of billboards for that case and tried to generate media interest," Houghton told Fox News Digital. "A lot of DNA was put into the national databases that were kind of new on the scene at that time, so that was the new technology then." Fox Hollow Serial Killer's Secret Tapes Could Reveal Murder Horrors If Ever Found: Documentary Despite the multiple attempts to solve what happened to Schepers, detectives were unable to follow any major leads, until the department launched "Somebody Knows Something." "When we started to look at the Karen Schepers case, we realized that we could put everything out there because we had no idea what happened to her," Vartanian said. "Whether it was an accident or if it was something intentional, and then anything in between. There was so much time that had gone by, we knew that there was a lot of content that could be there." With permission from her family, Houghton and Vartanian began digging for new information regarding Schepers, using a mix of old-fashioned police work while leaning on updated technology. Missing Wisconsin Teen Found More Than Two Months After Disappearance "This was very much an old-fashioned 'talk to people, get in a car, go knock on doors, go drive around' type of investigation," Houghton said. "Investigations for any of our cases are still like that, but this was much more like that in the fact that we had to go look and see what roads existed in 1983? What bodies of water existed in 1983? Because it's very different now than it was then." The pair hit the pavement, talking to locals in the area who knew Schepers to paint a picture of her final moments on the morning she went missing. Houghton and Vartanian worked to determine what route Schepers took home, along with researching the weather conditions and other details that may have contributed to her disappearance. As the detectives were pouring over print media, they discovered the nearby Fox River was flooded at the time of Schepers' disappearance – a key break in the case that prompted them to call in expert divers to search the body of water. Luxury Florida Mall's String Of Murders And Kidnapping Have One Thing In Common: Retired Fbi Agent "Interestingly enough, we would get a lot of tips from people that were saying, 'There's no way she's in the river'," Houghton said. "'It's too shallow, I fish there, I boat there.' However, there are different parts where the river might be two feet deep or one foot deep, and there are other spots where it's [up to] 15 feet deep, so it really depended on where you were looking." On March 24, 2025, the Elgin Police Department called in Chaos Divers, a non-profit team of independent divers specializing in underwater recovery, to search the river. In a dramatic end to a four-decades-long mystery, Schepers and her vehicle were found. "As we each heard the news that her car was found, time stopped while we drew an audible gasp," Schepers' family said in a statement. "When it started back up again, our lives took a new path that finally included the answer to 'Where is Karen?' This question has been haunting all who knew Karen for many years." 'Dating Game' Serial Killer's Rise To Fame Was Key To His Downfall, Arresting Officer Reveals For First Time The divers were able to recover Schepers' vehicle while keeping the structure intact, allowing investigators to use dental records to identify her skeletal remains. "With this case, it was a bit of a unicorn in the fact that we had no idea what happened to her," Houghton said. "Don't be afraid to fail, don't be afraid of looking foolish. Because at the end of the day, the goal is to find this person and we did that in this case. If we do this five more times and this is the only time it works out, so be it. But if you do this five or 10 times, and you find one case or solve one case, it's totally worth doing that for that family." Houghton and Vartanian are already planning on the next case to revive in the second season of their podcast, telling Fox News Digital it will likely be a homicide investigation. Houghton and Vartanian were able to provide her 90-year-old mother with two items recovered from her vehicle – her sapphire birthstone ring and class of 1977 high school graduation tassel – providing a sense of closure for Schepers' loved ones as the mystery surrounding her disappearance finally comes to a close. "We hope for continued success on each and every cold case," Schepers' family said. "Miracles do happen."Original article source: Detectives' true crime podcast helps dig up breakthrough in case that haunted family: 'drew audible gasp'
Fox News
11-05-2025
- Fox News
Detectives' true crime podcast helps dig up breakthrough in case that haunted family: ‘drew audible gasp'
What started as a way for a pair of two Illinois detectives to crowdsource tips to solve decades-old cold cases ended in a shocking discovery. Detectives Andrew Houghton and Matt Vartanian were looking to breathe new life into unsolved cases by launching the true-crime podcast, "Somebody Knows Something," in October 2024 at the request of Elgin Police Department Chief Ana Lalley. Their goal centered around using modern investigative technology to potentially bring closure to local families. "We both kind of looked at each other and said, 'No, I'm not really sure that's for us'," Vartanian told Fox News Digital. "Then we took a step back, were open-minded in our thinking and objective, and thought that this could be a really good vehicle to utilize investigative processes within law enforcement." The pair combed through open cold cases within their area, zeroing in on the disappearance of 23-year-old Karen Schepers in 1983. "Our thought was, depending on whatever case we started with or if we did multiple cases, there may be people that are outside of Illinois and outside of our region that might have known about some of these cases," Vartanian said. "So it was the right thing to be able to get that information out there to be able to get answers for the victims and families." Schepers was enjoying a night of celebratory drinks with coworkers at P.M. Bentley's in Carpentersville, Illinois – located 45 miles outside Chicago. Schepers was the last of the group to leave the bar at approximately 1 a.m. on April 16, 1983, and neither she nor her 1980 Toyota Celica were ever seen again, according to the Elgin Police Department. Even though the community had countless theories of what may have happened to Schepers, including the possibility something happened to her on the way home or when she arrived at her destination, the case ran cold. Schepers' disappearance remained an open investigation for 41 years, and was briefly revisited by the Illinois State Police in the late 1980s and again by investigators in 2010. "In 2008 [and] 2009, we did a bunch of billboards for that case and tried to generate media interest," Houghton told Fox News Digital. "A lot of DNA was put into the national databases that were kind of new on the scene at that time, so that was the new technology then." Despite the multiple attempts to solve what happened to Schepers, detectives were unable to follow any major leads, until the department launched "Somebody Knows Something." "When we started to look at the Karen Schepers case, we realized that we could put everything out there because we had no idea what happened to her," Vartanian said. "Whether it was an accident or if it was something intentional, and then anything in between. There was so much time that had gone by, we knew that there was a lot of content that could be there." With permission from her family, Houghton and Vartanian began digging for new information regarding Schepers, using a mix of old-fashioned police work while leaning on updated technology. "This was very much an old-fashioned 'talk to people, get in a car, go knock on doors, go drive around' type of investigation," Houghton said. "Investigations for any of our cases are still like that, but this was much more like that in the fact that we had to go look and see what roads existed in 1983? What bodies of water existed in 1983? Because it's very different now than it was then." The pair hit the pavement, talking to locals in the area who knew Schepers to paint a picture of her final moments on the morning she went missing. Houghton and Vartanian worked to determine what route Schepers took home, along with researching the weather conditions and other details that may have contributed to her disappearance. As the detectives were pouring over print media, they discovered the nearby Fox River was flooded at the time of Schepers' disappearance – a key break in the case that prompted them to call in expert divers to search the body of water. "Interestingly enough, we would get a lot of tips from people that were saying, 'There's no way she's in the river'," Houghton said. "'It's too shallow, I fish there, I boat there.' However, there are different parts where the river might be two feet deep or one foot deep, and there are other spots where it's [up to] 15 feet deep, so it really depended on where you were looking." On March 24, 2025, the Elgin Police Department called in Chaos Divers, a non-profit team of independent divers specializing in underwater recovery, to search the river. In a dramatic end to a four-decades-long mystery, Schepers and her vehicle were found. "As we each heard the news that her car was found, time stopped while we drew an audible gasp," Schepers' family said in a statement. "When it started back up again, our lives took a new path that finally included the answer to 'Where is Karen?' This question has been haunting all who knew Karen for many years." The divers were able to recover Schepers' vehicle while keeping the structure intact, allowing investigators to use dental records to identify her skeletal remains. "With this case, it was a bit of a unicorn in the fact that we had no idea what happened to her," Houghton said. "Don't be afraid to fail, don't be afraid of looking foolish. Because at the end of the day, the goal is to find this person and we did that in this case. If we do this five more times and this is the only time it works out, so be it. But if you do this five or 10 times, and you find one case or solve one case, it's totally worth doing that for that family." Houghton and Vartanian are already planning on the next case to revive in the second season of their podcast, telling Fox News Digital it will likely be a homicide investigation. Houghton and Vartanian were able to provide her 90-year-old mother with two items recovered from her vehicle – her sapphire birthstone ring and class of 1977 high school graduation tassel – providing a sense of closure for Schepers' loved ones as the mystery surrounding her disappearance finally comes to a close. "We hope for continued success on each and every cold case," Schepers' family said. "Miracles do happen."
