Two Gunmen Charged In Harvey Hostage Standoff
CHICAGO (STMW) -- A convicted murderer who was on electronic home monitoring as a condition of his parole was one of two men charged late Thursday with taking six children and two women hostage after a shootout with Harvey Police this week.
Though David Jordan, 40, of Dixmoor, served time for murder, he was off the electronic-monitoring grid and unaccounted for by the state prison system for 7.5 hours before an arrest warrant was triggered late Tuesday.
During that time, Jordan and fellow parolee Peter Williams, 41, of Chicago, were engaged in a high-profile and tense standoff with police that stretched across two days.
Before barricading themselves inside the home Tuesday afternoon, they allegedly were caught breaking into a home near 147th and Robey by police. In an ensuing shootout, Harvey police officer Darnell Keel was hit by a bullet that broke his arm, authorities said. Another officer was grazed by a bullet and treated at the scene.
Jordan and Williams were both charged with attempted murder, home invasion, kidnapping and sexual assault Thursday night, according to the Cook County State's Attorney's office.
Williams also was on parole, but he was not subject to home monitoring.
State officials said Thursday that Jordan's absence didn't raise red flags at first. Under the conditions of his parole, he was allowed to leave his sister's Dixmoor home to search for work.
But when Jordan didn't return home by his 3 p.m. deadline, the Illinois Department of Corrections parole division tried without success to contact Jordan six times, a spokesman for the agency said.
After the sixth attempt to reach him had failed, the department generated an automatic arrest warrant that was distributed to law-enforcement agencies across the state at 10:22 p.m., agency spokesman Tom Schaer said.
By that point, Jordan and Williams had been barricaded inside the home with the hostages for 10 hours, police said.
So why wasn't an arrest warrant issued for Jordan earlier?
Schaer declined to divulge whether a specific time limit exists that would trigger an arrest warrant if a parolee on electronic-monitoring is missing.
"We are unable to tell you that time because it would jeopardize public safety," Schaer told the Chicago Sun-Times. "It would tell parolees how and when we look for them. We prefer to keep them in the dark as much as possible."
Both Jordan and Williams have extensive criminal histories.
Before his parole, Jordan served 27.5 years in state prison for his role in the 1990 murder of a Chicago cabdriver, state records show.
Williams, meanwhile, served multiple stints in state prison for multiple convictions that included weapons offenses, hijacking and concealing a homicide, records show.
Both men were expected to appear in bond court Friday in Markham.
(Source: Sun-Times Media Wire © Chicago Sun-Times 2014. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)