Wife Watches Husband Get Smashed in Head With Beer Bottle During Fight: Prosecutor

PALOS HILLS, IL -- A Palos Hills man was arrested after he smashed a beer bottle over another man’s head sending him to a local hospital with a serious brain injury, prosecutors said Wednesday in court.

Laimis Stanevicius, 31, appeared before Cook County Judge Donald Havis on a felony charge of aggravated battery causing great bodily harm. The confrontation unfolded around 8:30 a.m. Oct. 2 in the 0-20 block of Cour Montreal, Palos Hills.

According to the injured man’s wife, she received a phone call around from someone using a fake Lithuanian name asking for her husband to step outside their town home. When the man went out to meet the purported caller, he was confronted Stanevicius, who was allegedly brandishing a beer bottle, and a second man armed with a baseball bat.

The prosecutor said the man went to his own vehicle to get a bat to protect himself, when Stanevicius slammed the beer bottle over the man’s face and head. When the injured man’s wife saw her husband bleeding and unconscious on the ground, she ran back into their home and told her son to call police.

The man was taken to Palos Community Hospital, where he was transferred to Loyola Medical Center and admitted to the ICU with brain injuries. The prosecutor said doctors found a blood clot on the man’s brain.

Both the wife, who saw the entire incident, and the injured man identified Stanevicius from a photo array, the prosecutor said.

The other man with Stanevicius has not been charged. The prosecutor did not know if Stanevicius and the injured man were acquainted or what prompted the altercation.

Judge Havis set bail at $100,000. Stanevicius was ordered to surrender his FOID card to the court clerk, and any firearms to Palos Hills police. He was also ordered to not have any contact with the injured man and his family.

Stanevicius’s next court hearing is Nov. 1 in Bridgeview.