CHICAGO — A man involved in a 2019 shooting incident who disappeared after cutting off his electronic monitoring bracelet at a suburban Chicago Walmart may have returned to Chicagoland, according to the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.
Isaac Martinez, 31, was placed on electronic monitoring after his attorney pleaded with a judge to release him from a “Petri dish of potential contagion” at the Cook County Jail during the early days of the pandemic.
Two years later, Martinez was 30 miles from his River West apartment when he cut off his ankle monitor at the Bolingbrook Walmart, officials say. Authorities have not seen him since.
Prosecutors claim Martinez was the driver of a car from which another man shot toward an occupied vehicle in the 3600 block of West Division on May 22, 2019. Chicago cops arrested both men, and Judge Susana Ortiz detained them without bail.
About eight months later, the COVID pandemic arrived, and authorities released hundreds of inmates from the jail to reduce virus transmission. Neither Martinez nor his co-defendant was allowed out.
Court records show that on June 3, 2020, Martinez’s attorney pleaded with Judge William O’Brien to release him on an ankle monitor upon payment of a $20,000 bail deposit paid by his mother.
The attorney argued that Martinez wanted to help raise his child and claimed that COVID was “at least minimally 99 times as potentially fatal as influenza, and maybe as much as 2999 times as potentially fatal as influenza.”
In November 2021, Martinez was still on electronic monitoring when he was permitted to move from Berwyn to a residence in the 700 block of North Morgan in River West, according to court records.
Despite living within view of the Sears Tower, Martinez and his ankle monitor were shopping at the Bolingbrook Walmart when he cut off his monitoring bracelet and slipped into the wind, officials said.
The sheriff’s office did not say why its investigators believe Martinez is in the Chicago area again or where they think he has been for the past two years. Anyone who knows where he is can contact the sheriff’s police at 708-865-4700.
While he was away, his co-defendant pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm in exchange for a 10-year sentence.
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