Orland Park Parolee Kidnaps Girlfriend By Threatening Her With A Shotgun: Prosecutor

COOK COUNTY, IL -- An Orland Park man is facing an assortment of felonies after he allegedly lead his girlfriend away with a shotgun and held her captive at his residence, prosecutors said. Tomas Rekasius, 25, is charged with kidnapping with a firearm, aggravated domestic battery with strangulation, kidnapping by force, criminal sexual assault, unlawful restraint and aggravated battery. He was arrested by Cook County Sheriff's police in unincorporated Cook County. Rekasius is currently on parole for a drug charge.

The prosecutor said that Rekasius had been in a dating relationship with the Alsip woman for the past nine months. On July 9, be got upset when he learned his girlfriend had met another friend at an area restaurant. Rekasius allegedly forced the woman into his car with a shotgun.

After driving around for awhile with the shotgun in the car looking for the friend, the went to a mutual friend’s residence, the prosecutor said. Rekasius threatened the friend and he and his girlfriend left, according to the charges.

The two went back to Rekasius’s residence, listed in a court records as an Orland Park address, the prosecutor said. The girlfriend alleged that Rekasius choked and bit her, then sexually assaulted her while she was sleeping. She was able to retrieve her phone the next morning and leave under the guise of needing to talk to her brother, the prosecutor said.

Rekasius’s attorney told the judge he didn’t agree with any of the facts that the prosecutor presented. The attorney said that Rekasius and the women spent the weekend together, attending a wedding on July 8. Rekasius never owned a shotgun and police could not find one when they searched his home.

“He’s doing everything he’s supposed to be doing,” the attorney said, describing how his client earned college credits while in prison, and has since his release made the dean’s list at Moraine Valley Community College. The attorney asked for reasonable bail, saying his family could put up a $10,000 bond.

The prosecutor noted that Rekasius is on parole from a nine-year prison sentence after he pled guilty to a 2013 drug charged for manufacture and delivery of cocaine in Champaign County, IL, where Rekasius formerly attended the University of Illinois.

“This is a public safety issue,” Cook County Judge Donald Havis said, before setting bail at $250,000. Rekasius is due back in court Aug. 8 in Bridgeview. Rekasius also has a parole hold.

An order of protection was issued to the woman. During the bond hearing, Rekasius could be seen turning toward the woman, who was present in the courtroom with her family, with his hands folded in prayer, mouthing “please, please.”

According to a transcript of Rekasius’s appeal of his 2013 drug conviction, a co-defendant described how Rekasius and another co-defendant “sold everything; ecstasy to Molly to acid and a lot of fake chemical drugs" at concerts and the fraternity houses of Champaign-Urbana.

The transcript also noted the if Rekasius would someday find himself “sitting in another courtroom sometime in the future waiting to be sentenced on another felony. His attorney is quoted as saying, “I would sincerely hope and believe, based upon everything that's been presented, that this is his last stop on the felony highway.”

This story has been updated to include the place of arrest.