Sep 18, 2009 6:49 pm US/Central
Guards Suspended With Pay After Maday Escape
CHICAGO (Sun-Times Media Wire) ―
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An investigator for the Cook County state's attorney's office, wearing orange prisoner pants and no shoes, speaks with Rolling Meadows police and detectives in the northwest parking lot of Meijer on Golf Road on Thursday.
Daily Herald
Two Cook County state's attorney's investigators who were overpowered as they were driving a robber to court for sentencing have been suspended with pay as authorities examine whether they violated a policy for transporting prisoners.
The investigators were both sitting in the front seat Thursday as they moved Robert Maday from the Kankakee County jail to a courthouse in Rolling Meadows, where Maday was to be sentenced to 13 years in prison for robbery.
Maday's hands and legs were shackled as he sat in the back seat. He jammed his shoulder between the bucket seats of the car and grabbed the driver's handgun. Then he pointed the weapon at the passenger and told him to give up his weapon or he would kill him, a source said.
The car did not have a barrier separating the front compartment from the rear.
Maday, 39, escaped with both guns and was recaptured Friday in West Chicago after allegedly robbing a bank in Bloomingdale, authorities said.
Maday had told people close to him, including a girlfriend, that he was planning to escape, sources said.
"The escape of Maday is an extremely serious breach of security," Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez said in a prepared statement.
According to the policy of the state's attorney's office, one of the investigators should have been sitting in the back seat with Maday.
One of the investigators, who is 60, was once the bodyguard for former Cook County state's attorney Dick Devine. He was driving the car, sources said.
The other investigator is a 57-year-old former supervisor who was demoted to investigator after Alvarez succeeded Devine, the sources said.
The state's attorney's office has only one car equipped with a cage that separates the investigators from the prisoner. Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for the Cook County state's attorney's office, said the office recently applied for a grant to obtain at least two additional cage cars.
Cook County state's attorney's investigators transport about 300 prisoners every year and there have been no other escapes in the 10 years since they've had that duty, Daly said.
In Thursday's escape, Maday forced the investigators to drive their car off Interstate 90 and into a parking lot of a suburban department store. He swapped his orange jail uniform with pants and shoes from one investigator.
Then he handcuffed them in their car and fled into the Meijer Store in Rolling Meadows. He allegedly carjacked another vehicle from the parking lot and made his getaway.
Although he initially threatened to kill the investigators, he later told them he did not intend to harm them, authorities said.
Friday morning, Maday allegedly robbed a bank in Bloomingdale soon after hijacking a car from a Hoffman Estates woman. He allegedly robbed the same institution, First American Bank, in 2008, stealing about $7,000, authorities said.
(Source: Sun-Times Media Wire © Chicago Sun-Times 2009. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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