Police entered ahomein Southwest suburban Tinley Park about 11:30 Tuesday morning, searching for two escaped prisoners.
Joseph "Jose" Banks was been caught by FBI agents and Chicago police late Thursday night, according to law enforcement sources.
FBI agents and officers from the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force and Chicago police arrested Banks about 11:30 p.m. Thursday in the 2300 block of North Bosworth Avenue in the Sheffield Neighbors neighborhood, authorities said.
At the Bosworth address, a young man and a woman who stepped outside declined to talk.
“We’re not in the mood to answer any questions,” he said.
Colm Marron, who stepped out of a bar around the corner from the apartment where agents and police found Banks, noticed about a half dozen unmarked police cars gathering in the Walgreens parking lot across the street.
“They flew out, just down there,” he said, motioning from inside the bar toward Bosworth Avenue.
Seconds later he heard a “huge bang.”
“I was surprised how loud the bang was. It wasn’t like any thunder I’ve ever heard,” he said. “There wasn’t any echo to it, just that loud, off the bat.”
A couple of minutes later, he said, another handful of marked Chicago police cars arrived.
At a BP gas station surrounded at Fullerton, Clybourn and Ashland avenues, an attendant working an overnight shift saw two Chicago police cars – an SUV and a squad – with an unmarked car in the front and back.
“It’s not like there was a big old mob out there looking,” said Ralph De LaRosa, 45.
He noticed the flashing lights while he stood inside the gas station.
A police left the scene – west on Fullerton then south on Ashland – they kept their lights on and stayed in the order they were parked, he said.
Banks and his cellmate, Kenneth Conley, both convicted bank robbers, were awaiting sentencing and were last accounted for at 10 p.m. Monday during a routine bed check, authorities said. About 7 a.m. Tuesday, jail employees arriving for work saw the ropes dangling from a hole in an exterior wall near the 15th floor. The duo used sheets to crawl from a window.
The two had put clothing and sheets under blankets in both their beds to throw off guards making nighttime checks, authorities said.
Cameras mounted to the side of the 28-story Metropolitan Correctional Center in the South Loop captured Banks and Conley sliding down the building shortly after 2:30 a.m. Tuesday on a rope constructed from knotted bedsheets, an employee, who wished to remain anonymous, said. The men left view briefly, but it was believed they landed on the roof of a garage below. Moments later, footage from a different camera showed them hopping a black fence marking the perimeter of the property, according to the employee.
The FBI said a surveillance camera a few blocks from the jail showed the men, who wore light-colored clothing, hailing a taxi at Congress Parkway and Michigan Avenue. They also appeared to be wearing backpacks, according to the FBI.
The manhunt for the inmates included several high-profile raids Tuesday in the southwest suburbs of Tinley Park and New Lenox, where Conley's family and associates lived. A $50,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the two fugitives was announced by the FBI this week.
Conley is still unaccounted for as of Friday morning.
Bank robber caught 2 days after bed sheet jailbreak
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Bank robber caught 2 days after bed sheet jailbreak
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Bank robber caught 2 days after bed sheet jailbreak
