Escapee Robert Maday caught, Fugitive chase through suburbs ends with car crash

Author: admin

18 Sep

Robert Maday, the career criminal who was the subject of a massive manhunt in the west and northwest suburbs after escaping Thursday, was apprehended Friday after a police chase ended in a crash in West Chicago.

Maday crashed the stolen Volkswagen Jetta he was driving two miles south of the intersection of North Avenue and Route 59, according to Bloomingdale police.

Robert Maday

“I couldn’t be happier,” said Bloomingdale Police Chief Tim Goergen. “I’m glad it’s over.” A crowd of about 80 spectators at Route 59 and James Avenue clapped and cheered as Maday was driven away in an ambulance.

Nicole Bratko, 29, of St. Charles, was driving home on Route 59, about to turn onto James Avenue when she saw squad cars with flashing lights coming toward her.

Then she saw the Jetta coming up behind her.

She said the Jetta clipped the back of a black Jeep, smashed into a traffic light and then went through some bushes and into a yard on James Avenue.

“It was like a movie when the cops came out,” she said. “He clipped the Jeep and then he hit the pole. The pole flipped up like a toy. Then he went through the bushes, then all of a sudden, the cops cam with their guns drawn.” She credited officers for their quick action.

“I have to say the cops were right on top of it,” she said. “I’m still shaking. I was afraid we were going to get shot.” Bratko said the driver of the Jeep was injured, too. Both he and Maday were taken on stretchers to waiting ambulances.

Goergen said West Chicago police officers spotted the Volkswagen and gave chase.

“Mr. Maday is in custody. He was involved in a chase, a pursuit, with West Chicago police who did a fine job spotting the vehicle,” he said.

Maday’s morning also allegedly included hijacking the Jetta from a woman in Hoffman Estates and robbing a bank in west suburban Bloomingdale, a bank the FBI said he robbed in 2008.

“I’m the guy that’s been on the news — give me the money,” Paul Bock, supervisory agent for the FBI, quoted Maday as telling an employee at The First American Bank, 80 Stratford Drive, around 9 a.m. Friday, according to the FBI’s Chicago office.

Earlier Friday morning, Hoffman Estates Sgt. Greg Poulos said a woman was driving to her job in a business complex in the 2000 block of Hassel Road at

6:45 a.m. and saw a man sitting on the curb.

As she opened the door, the man approached her, showed her a gun and she gave him her car, Poulos said.

She later identified the carjacker as Maday, Poulos said. He was last seen driving the Jetta west on Hassel Road toward Barrington Road.

The witness told police he was wearing blue jeans, a green T-shirt and a white baseball cap with lettering.

Schools throughout the west and northwest suburbs were on lockdown Friday morning, according to information on the district Web sites.

Sally Daly, spokeswoman for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office, said police spent the night and morning combing the suburbs for any sign of Maday, following up on tips pouring in to local police stations.

“We want to bring an end to the disruption that has occurred in the northwest suburban communities,” she said. “Understandably people are shaken up.”

Maday, 39, overpowered two law officers, taking their weapons as he was being driven from Kankakee to a court hearing at the Rolling Meadows branch of the Cook County Criminal Courts Thursday.

He swapped his orange jail uniform with the pants and shoes from one investigators, handcuffed the two men in their car, then fled into the Meijer Store in Rolling Meadows.

He then allegedly carjacked another vehicle at gunpoint from the parking lot, and abandoned it a few miles away near Arlington Heights and Algonquin roads in Arlington Heights, not far from an apartment building where he had lived.

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