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Chicago Man Who Threatened Pulse-Style Massacre Tracked Down, Then Let Go!

 Shane Sleeper reportedly planned to gun down members of his local LGBT community at gay bars.


by  16h ago

Police in Illinois have located a suspect accused of planning terror attacks on gay bars after mistakenly releasing him from jail.
Shane Sleeper, 31, was initially arrested by police in February and has been held in jail since then. Originally, he faced misdemeanor charges of obstructing and resisting a police officer. The state attorney’s office later dropped those charges, but only to streamline the process of charging Sleeper with a felony for making a terrorist threat. (Previously, Sleeper had announced plans to “[make] Orlando come to Chicago” by gunning down members of the LGBT community at Chicago gay bars.)

Chicago Police Department
But wires were crossed when the attorney’s office failed to notify local police of the reason behind the change—and when jail officials saw that Sleeper’s misdemeanor charges were dropped on May 1, he was released from custody.
“We were never notified by the State’s Attorney’s office or the Chicago Police Department that he was to be indicted on felony charges,” a spokesperson from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office told NBC Chicago.
Local authorities quickly banded together once news of the mishap came to light, and Sleeper was tracked down this afternoon, less than two days after his accidental release. He was arrested without incident around 12:30pm on Chicago’s North Side, reports The Chicago Tribune.

A man charged with threatening violence at gay bars in Lakeview was taken into custody Thursday afternoon, two days after he was accidentally released from Cook County Jail, officials said.
Shane Sleeper was arrested without incident at about 12:30 p.m. on the North Side by the sheriff’s fugitive apprehension unit, according to Cara Smith, policy chief for Cook County Sherif Tom Dart.
Officials say an apparent communication breakdown between the state's attorney's office and the sheriff's office led to the release of Sleeper, 31, on Tuesday night.
Sleeper was arrested in February and initially charged with misdemeanor charges of obstructing and resisting a peace officer, according to Smith. In one of his threats, Sleeper allegedly said “Orlando will come to Chicago,’’ an apparent reference to the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla.
On Tuesday, the misdemeanor charges were dismissed and felony charges of state terrorism, hate crime and harassment were filed against Sleeper, according to state’s attorney’s office spokesman Robert Foley. Sleeper was ordered held without bail.
Smith said the sheriff's office only knew of the misdemeanor charges being dismissed, not about new felony charges being filed against Sleeper. So he was released.
“Preliminarily, it appears that the only cases he was being held on were dismissed and the sheriff’s office was never notified of any additional charges that were brought,’’ Smith said. “We were never notified. Our phones are on 24 hours a day. We complied with the only court order we received."
But Foley countered that the sheriff’s office is responsible for custody of defendants.
“Mr. Sleeper was in custody when the sheriff’s office brought him to court yesterday,’’ Foley said in emailed statement. “He was arraigned in a felony trial court room, where he was assigned a no bail status and left in the custody of the sheriff’s office.”
During the hearing before Cook County Judge Matthew Coghlan, Sleeper was arraigned on charges of falsely making a terrorist threat, a hate crime, harassment through electronic communications, criminal trespassing, stalking, assault, false personation of a police officer and telephone harassment, Foley said.

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