Cook County murder defendant who fled to Ohio one of more than 50 murder defendants here out on bond and on electronic monitoring

On Oct. 30, friends and family of Reinaldo “Reii” Sanchez gathered on what would have been his 29th birthday, a step toward healing after he was fatally stabbed last year in Portage Park.

As they lighted lanterns and released balloons, they didn’t know that two days earlier the man charged in his killing had violated his house arrest, fled Illinois, and pulled a gun on two sheriff’s deputies some 250 miles away.

Sanchez’s mother, Guillermina, was watching the television news when she saw that Juan Torkelson — who allegedly killed her son and injured three others — had escaped from his electronic monitoring.

“No one told us,” she said in Spanish, stammering over her words through shaking breaths. “They didn’t take the proper precautions, they let him out. That is what hurts me the most. It’s ridiculous, he’s a dangerous person.”

U.S. marshals on Tuesday arrested Torkelson in West Virginia, authorities said.

But that was after long days of worry and fear for Sanchez’s loved ones and the other victims, frustration that they had learned of his escape on the news, and concern that he had been let out of jail in the first place.

More than 50 Cook County murder defendants are awaiting trial on electronic home monitoring, like Torkelson was. After a significant push toward bail reform, and a pandemic that made emptying the jail a priority, the number of people on monitoring has skyrocketed — and along with it, the number of people on ankle bracelets with serious violent charges.

In October 2016, there were 17 people on ankle monitors charged with murder, according to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s office. As of Thursday, there were 54.

And the electronic monitoring population as a whole has grown by 1,000 just since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dart said in a budget hearing Thursday. In the years since Cook County courts took steps toward bond reform, his office has raised concerns their electronic monitoring program is stretched too thin, trying to keep track of more and more people with serious charges.

It is incredibly challenging to keep track of them all, Dart said at the budget meeting.

“We didn’t get extra money, didn’t get extra resources, didn’t get anything,” he told county commissioners. “On an average day we have about 20 people out for the entire county, per shift, to watch 3,300 people.”

Like Torkelson, most of the murder defendants on electronic monitoring are given ankle bracelets as a condition of bond — that is, they are placed on monitoring only after they post money to get out of jail, said Sarah Staudt, an attorney at the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice.

“The judge likely assumed that Torkelson would remain in custody. He ordered EM as essentially a ‘backup’ on the off chance that Torkelson did post that money,” Staudt said. Court records show the case was handled by Judge John Fitzgerald Lyke Jr.

Staudt keeps a close eye on bail numbers, and said that Torkelson’s $100,000 bond is not particularly rare. His case was unusual largely in that he was able to post the required funds.

“There are other murder defendants, and defendants with other very serious crimes, who are incarcerated on that bond or a lower one,” she said.

Torkelson’s attorney, Robert Kerr, told the Tribune that his client has a “credible and viable” claim of self-defense. While he did not represent Torkelson during the initial bond hearing, he said electronic monitoring was appropriate.

“Any reasonable person in his shoes on that day not only would have, but should have, acted in a way to defend himself and others on scene,” he said.

Sanchez was killed in November of last year, but Torkelson was not arrested until May.

In court earlier this year, Cook County prosecutors said Sanchez and his friends were in an argument at a bar with another group of patrons. Someone in the opposing group messaged friends — including Torkelson — to come back them up.

But by the time Torkelson, armed with a knife, and his friends got to the bar, the argument was largely over, prosecutors said.

Torkelson’s attorney denied that framing, saying “by all accounts, it seems as if two groups of people spilled out of a bar and started a brawl.”

Sanchez had just gotten into a car’s driver’s seat when someone else in Torkelson’s group backed his pickup truck into the car, prosecutors said.

The truck drove off, and Torkelson ran up to Sanchez in the driver’s seat and began stabbing him, prosecutors said. Torkelson’s attorney strenuously denies that the attack came out of nowhere, as prosecutors described.

“If he did react or respond in self-defense, it was in response to an initial aggressor,” Kerr said, noting that his client was not the only person in the street that night who was armed with a knife.

Sanchez was able to get out of the car, but Torkelson kept stabbing him, along with others who came to Sanchez’s aid, prosecutors said.

“We’re not exactly sure why or how it happened,” said a 29-year-old friend of Sanchez who was critically injured in the attack. He asked not to be identified out of fear for his safety. “We don’t know the motive.”

The man said he was stabbed once, which cut an artery and punctured a lung. He went in and out of consciousness while lying in the parking lot.

He heard people yelling for help, he said, and told himself that people wouldn’t find him where he was lying, so he was able to get up and was later told he walked a full block. A good Samaritan driving by found him unconscious and called 911. He had surgery to remove part of his lung and spent a week in the hospital. Now, he feels like he more easily gets out of breath, especially while exercising or during work doing physical labor.

Sanchez collapsed in Irving Park Road and was later pronounced dead.

Torkelson was arrested May 28, according to Chicago police. He was charged with one count of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted first-degree murder.

Detectives told Sanchez’s friends that someone from the state’s attorney’s office would be in touch with them after Torkelson was arrested, and that was their last interaction with the detectives, said a 27-year-old woman who was a witness of the attack and also asked not to be identified out of safety concerns. But no one reached out.

Then came the court hearing. On May 30, Torkelson was ordered held on $100,000 bond with electronic monitoring as a condition of his release if he posted the necessary $10,000, according to court records and Dart’s office.

The group found out he was put on electronic monitoring through their own online research, the woman said.

“Once we heard about the bond that was set for him, and he was able to be on house arrest, that was a slap in the face, honestly,” the 29-year-old stabbing survivor told the Tribune.

Guillermina Sanchez, the victim’s mother, said she received a call from the state’s attorney’s office on Tuesday informing her that Torkelson was at large, long after she had already found out. She said she told authorities long before the escape that she was worried about Torkelson’s low bond, concerned for the safety of the survivors and her family’s well-being.

“These boys are traumatized from this crime, it’s not easy surviving an attack like this, I hurt every day. He left me with no son, my only son,” she said. “If my son was white or had a white last name, maybe they would have taken his case seriously. Because for me, they told me nothing.”

The office of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who won reelection Tuesday, said its Victim Witness staff notified Sanchez on Tuesday that Torkelson had jumped bail, after being notified by the sheriff a few days earlier. Foxx spokeswoman Tandra Simonton in an email addressed questions about whether prosecutors had protested the bond decision on Torkelson.

“At the bail hearing, prosecutors presented all available information regarding the charges related to this case and the offender’s criminal history to the court so the judge could make his final determination on Torkelson’s bail and custody,” the email stated. “Additionally, the court granted our request for special conditions of bail, which include electronic monitoring if bail is posted and ordered the defendant have no contact with the victims and witnesses in this case.”

Torkelson’s attorney said the judge must have “recognized this case for what it is, which is a good case, a strong case of self-defense and a case involving many issues related to the identity of each and every offender that was out here on that day. Torkelson’s not the only one who was involved in what happened out there. Far from it.”

On Oct. 27, the sheriff’s office, which oversees the electronic monitoring program, said it was notified of a “possible unauthorized leave” for Torkelson. The office is notified by its program vendor when a monitor unit leaves a geographic area it has been designated to remain in, officials said.

About 1 a.m. Oct. 28, two sheriff’s deputies in Madison County, Ohio — some 250 miles away — pulled over Torkelson for equipment issues with his vehicle and for following too closely to another car, said Madison County sheriff’s Lt. Bryan White.

White said it took a few minutes for Torkelson to pull over. When he did, the deputies approached the vehicle on foot, Torkelson pulled out a gun and the deputies heard it click, White said.

The deputies then took cover, and Torkelson apparently drove off. His car crashed and he fled on foot, White said.

In the car, the deputies found a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield 9 mm handgun, a box of 9 mm ammunition, and a bag that had a knife and a magazine with six rounds, according to an incident report.

That day, in Cook County, the sheriff’s office visited Torkelson’s reported address. He was not there but he had left a note for a resident there, saying he had to go to a hospital. Investigators also discovered that Torkelson had been granted permission to meet with a local law enforcement agency that day.

They checked with both the hospital and the law enforcement agency but found no record he had visited either location.

Torkelson was at large until Tuesday, when deputy U.S. marshals arrested him after developing information that he was in the area of Oak Hill, West Virginia, the southern part of the state, according to Mark Gregoline, deputy commander of the Marshals Service’s Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force.

Gregoline would not say how the marshals found him, but said their investigation led them to an apartment complex in the area.

When authorities arrived there, Torkelson leapt through a second-floor glass window and fled on foot, said Gregoline. He did not know Torkelson’s connection to the apartment complex.

After a brief foot chase, the marshals arrested Torkelson, who was carrying a large knife, Gregoline said.

Chicago Tribune’s Annie Sweeney and Jeremy Gorner contributed.

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