“Electronic Monitoring Appreciation Week” continues at CWB Chicago. Our team has been flooded with so many new stories about people being arrested while on EM lately, we decided to make a week of it. You can see all of our EM Appreciation Week coverage at this link. Here’s the latest:
Joshua Noah was supposed to be on electronic monitoring for two separate felony cases. He is charged with 27 felony counts in one case, including home invasion, kidnapping, carjacking, armed robbery, residential burglary, aggravated battery, and more. Charges in the other case include Class X armed violence, narcotics, and gun counts.
So where was Joshua Noah around 11:30 p.m. Saturday? Shooting a gun into the ceiling of a Mexican restaurant near Midway Airport and threatening five of its customers with his firearm, according to prosecutors.
“Mr. Noah is an extremely violent individual and should have never been out on bond or electronic monitoring,” retired Riverside Police Chief Tom Weitzel said Tuesday night. “He was the ringleader in an armed home invasion that took place in Riverside in 2019.” Weitzel was still chief then.
“In Cook County, bond court judges use electronic monitoring (EM) for reducing the jail population and saving dollars,” Weitzel continued. “The notion that this is somehow criminal justice reform and public safety is not affected by violent criminals on electronic monitoring is simply ridiculous.”
A violent home invasion and kidnapping
In 2020, prosecutors said Noah and two other armed men broke into a Riverside family’s home, beat a man who owed them drug money, and dumped him in an alley on the 4300 block of West 47th Street in Chicago. While they were in the house, the crew allegedly pistol-whipped the man’s mother and threatened the family.
A judge allowed him to go home on electronic monitoring by posting a $15,000 bail deposit. Details about the other felony case were not immediately available.
Friday night
Late Friday night, Noah, 24, allegedly walked into EL G-FE restaurant on the 4200 block of West 47th Street in Archer Heights — less than a block from where the Riverside home invasion victim’s beaten body was allegedly dumped.
Prosecutors said he fired a gun into the restaurant ceiling and then pointed it at “multiple” patrons before leaving the area in a car. The alleged victims called 911 with the gunman’s getaway car’s make, model, and license plate number.
Around the same time, police received a call of a traffic crash involving the same type of car with the same plate number. When officers arrived at the accident scene, Noah got out of the driver’s seat and ran, prosecutors said.
When cops caught him, he had a suggestion, according to the CPD arrest report: “Take the gun and let me go.”
Police said they found the gun he was apparently referring to on the driver’s seat of his crashed car.
He is charged with reckless discharge of a firearm endangering others and five counts of aggravated assault.
Judge Kelly McCarthy set his bail at $200,000 and ordered him to go onto electronic monitoring if he posts a 10% deposit bond in the case. However, he is now being held without bail in his other two felony cases, according to court records.
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