Shot 3 Times By Joliet Police: PPP Defendant Wants Wedding

JOLIET, IL — More than five months after being shot three times by Joliet police after authorities say Ryan Reddick bolted from the passenger side of a car holding a gun, the 36-year-old Will County Jail inmate has a lot more on his mind.

The Will County State's Attorney's Office is now accusing Reddick of bilking the government out of $21,000 in CARES ACT funds in 2021. Besides his five new felony criminal charges, Reddick is also trying to get married this month at the Will County Courthouse.

Reddick's defense lawyer for all three of his separate pending criminal cases at the courthouse, attorney Chuck Bretz, filed an order asking that the Will County Sheriff's Office transport his incarcerated client to the Will County Courthouse "to get married."

According to Bretz's motion, "the defendant and the defendant's girlfriend, Ariel Love, want to get married ... the defendant is respectfully requesting that this honorable court enter an order for the Will County Sheriff's Office to transport the defendant to the Will County Courthouse to get married."

Court documents indicated that Reddick hoped to tie the knot by Sept. 15, but that has not happened yet.

Bretz told Joliet Patch on Thursday that the courthouse wedding ceremony for Reddick and Love has not taken place yet because the couple is still in the process of obtaining their marriage license.

Bretz said he does not envision any additional snags once the marriage license gets obtained. Reddick's case has been in front of Will County Circuit Judge Dan Rippy.

In any event, Bretz's motion noted that Reddick is currently charged with felony offenses dating back to 2020, plus the Joliet police traffic stop from April where an officer shot him three times.

In total, Reddick is being at the Will County Courthouse with:

One count of armed habitual criminal, two counts of unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon, one count of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, one count of aggravated assault, one count of obstructing a peace officer and one count of possession of marijuana in a motor vehicle, one count of aggravated fleeing a peace officer, one more count of aggravated assault and one count of resisting arrest.

On the same day Bretz filed his order seeking to let his client get married at the courthouse, the Will County State's Attorney's Office charged Reddick with two counts of wire fraud, two counts of loan fraud and two counts of felony theft by deception.

According to the Aug. 30 complaint from a Joliet police detective: Reddick illegally secured a Paycheck Protection Program loan of $20,833 funded by the Small Business Administration as part of the CARES Act.

Reddick submitted a PPP loan application on April 15, 2021, "in which the defendant represented that his sole proprietor business had gross revenues of $146,183 for the year 2019, when the defendant knew that such representation was false," the complaint indicated.

Around May 5, 2021, the Small Business Administration sent Reddick a CARES Act check of $20,833."

At the time of the Aug. 30 six felonies, Reddick's bail stood at $500,000 in connection with his felony charges from the Joliet police shooting incident.

Now, with the five aCARES Act felonies, Will County Judge Donald DeWilkins upped Reddick's bail by $250,000, bringing the total bail for all Reddick's pending charges to $750,000.

On April 7, Joliet police told Joliet Patch that when a driver turned on to Linden Avenue to stop his car for police, Reddick ran from the car carrying his gun.

While Reddick was running in the dark on Linden Avenue, he dropped his gun, and then he went back to retrieve it from the ground. The officer was yelling at him not to touch the gun, and after Reddick bent down to pick the gun up, the officer shot him.

"He was facing the officer when he got shot," a source told Patch at the time. "He wasn't shot in the back at all."

Even though Reddick got shot three times, he managed to get past a couple more houses on Linden Avenue before officers captured him. His injuries were not life-threatening, and Reddick was booked into the Will County Jail one day after being shot, and he's stayed there ever since.