Police Use Drone To Find Fleeing Vehicular Invasion Suspect

HIGHLAND PARK, IL — Police used a drone Friday to find a Wisconsin man was hiding in heavy brush after he got into someone else's car and made them to take him across Highland Park, according to a public safety alert from the city.

Gabriel Trevon Antonio Lopez, 18, of the 2300 block of South 5th Street, Milwaukee, was taken into custody at about two hours after police got a report that someone had just gotten into a small pickup in the 700 block of St. Johns Avenue. Lopez put his bike in the back of the truck and forced its adult driver to take him to area of Skokie Valley and Lake Cook roads before dropping him off around 4:20 a.m., police said.

Police were told the suspect had fled on a bicycle and had not brandished a weapon or implied he was armed. The motorist was uninjured, according to the alert. After he got dropped off in the first block of Skokie Valley Road, police said he began heading back toward Milwaukee.

At 4:25 a.m., an officer noticed a suspect, later identified as Lopez, headed northbound on the Skokie Valley Trail while riding a bicycle, police said. He abandoned the bike south of Park Avenue West and took off running on foot.

Police set up a perimeter around the area and brought in the department's drone, which it has had for under a year. Using a camera mounted to the drone, officers found Lopez hiding in heavy brush, according to police.

Police said he fled again as officers approached and was taken into custody without incident at a nearby retention pond at 6:22 a.m.

Prosecutors later approved felony charges of vehicular invasion and unlawful restraint for Lopez, who was also charged with misdemeanor resisting police.

In Illinois, vehicular hijacking requires the use or threat of force. Vehicular invasion, on the other hand, is defined as getting into someone's car with the intent to steal something or commit a felony. Both offenses are class 1 felonies.

According to Deputy Chief Jon Lowman, the department's unmanned aerial system has been in operation for a few months. Previously, it had been used for training, mapping the scenes of crashes and a searching for a missing person, but Lopez's arrest marked the first time it was used to track down a fleeing suspect, he said.

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