O'Brien Blasts Foxx's 'Weak Policies' For Walgreens Stabbing

CHICAGO, IL — Judge Pat O’Brien, who is running on the GOP ticket for Cook County State’s Attorney, blasted his opponent for removing a Chicago man from electronic monitoring days before he allegedly stabbed a Walgreen’s employee to death over Labor Day weekend.

In a news conference in front of the Wicker Park Walgreens where 32-year-old Olga Maria Calderon was stabbed to death, O’Brien demanded to know why Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx why she raised no objection to taking 18-year-old Sincere Williams off electronic monitoring.

“[Foxx has] given more legal protection and more consideration to people that commit crimes than the people who are victims of crimes or potentially the victims of crimes,” O’Brien said during a brief news conference in front of the Walgreens store. “In this case, her failure to object and require the electronic monitoring may have cost Ms. Calderon her life.”

O’Brien said Williams had no business being on the street Sept. 6, when he walked into the Walgreens store and dragged Calderon to the front of the store before plunging a knife into her neck, face and back, prosecutors said.

Williams has a pending juvenile case for criminal damage to property, where he is accused smashing out the windows of a Melrose Park gun shop with a hammer and stole 14 handguns on May 4. Two months shy of his 18th birthday, Williams was charged as a juvenile and placed on electronic home monitoring, the Chicago Tribune reported. He was released in late August, just days before the slaying of Calderon. Williams has since been charged with first-degree murder.

According to O’Brien, Williams is also a suspect in two robberies that were committed in the Old Town neighborhood before Sept. 6, including the Walgreens store where Calderon worked.
O’Brien accused Foxx of her failure to object and require the electronic monitoring that he said may have cost Calderon her life.

“There are far too many cases in which Kim Foxx has failed to protect the public because she provides more legal protection for criminals rather than victims,” O’Brien said in a statement. “This case cost this woman her life and her family and the citizens of Cook County deserve an explanation as to why Kim Foxx allowed this offender to roam the streets unsupervised.”

“The murder of Calderon is one of many examples of the weakened prosecutorial policies that have been implemented by Foxx, under which assistant state’s attorneys sit silent in bond court and do not object to the court’s release of violent or repeat offenders on electronic monitoring or low cash bonds.”

Spokesman Tandra Simonton for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office told the Chicago Sun-Times that prosecutors had no objection to Williams being taken off electronic monitoring during a hearing in juvenile court.

An assistant public defender told the judge that Williams suffered from schizophrenia when Williams appeared in bond court for the homicide case at the Leighton Criminal Courts Building on Sept. 9.

Incumbent Foxx’s campaign blasted O’Brien for “fear mongering” and taking a page out of President Donald Trump’s “playbook,” the Sun-Times reported.