Having a brawl (Jan. 3)

Most people kind of let down after Christmas, kick back and save their energy for New Year’s Day.

But on the day after Christmas 2006, a full-scale brawl erupted on the upper level concourse of the North Riverside Park Mall, resulting in the arrests of seven people.

At first, a group of four teenage girls started fighting. Moments later, a group of eight to 10 teenage boys, started swinging about 30 feet away from the girls. Police said that the participants in the fight knew each other. The fight was triggered allegedly by a comment one of boys made to a girl. One youth was hospitalized briefly for injuries sustained in the fight. A North Riverside officer also sustained minor injuries trying to break up the brawl.

Mall management shut down the shopping center early that evening and beefed up security in the days following the fight.

Call in the feds (Jan. 3)

Police were tight-lipped in the wake of a suspected bomb threat in Riverside on Dec. 27, 2006. The Cook County Bomb Squad was called to the 400 block of Kent Road to dispose of a suspicious package mailed to a resident, who police refused to identify in any way other than to say the act was not random and had been delivered to the resident “because of his employment.”

Police evacuated neighboring homes and silenced all radio traffic while the bomb squad exploded the package, which police later said appeared to be a look-alike device and not a real bomb.

Nevertheless, several federal agencies were called in to investigate, including the FBI, ATF and U.S. Postal Inspector.

Paging Jerry Springer (Jan. 24)

Riverside police responded to a 911 call from a 27-year-old woman who claimed two other women were trying to break down her apartment door. Before police arrived, the two alleged attackers succeeded in gaining entry to the woman’s Harlem Avenue apartment and began beating her. Using a knife, the woman defended herself, slashing one of the attackers on the face and abdomen.

Turns out that the beating victim, later identified as Phaedra Brown, had been having a sexual affair with a neighbor’s 16-year-old son. When the boy’s mother found out, she and two other women sought to enact a little homestyle justice.

Brown was later convicted of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and is now a registered sex offender with the Illinois State Police.

Missing! (March 7)

Riverside mobilized in the wake of a report that a 16-year-old girl had gone missing on Feb. 27. The girl was last seen at the Riverside Public Library, but was seen earlier in the evening in the company of a teenage boy at a local cafe. One witness said the girl was checking the train schedule at the Riverside Metra stop that evening.

In the days following the girl’s disappearance, police worked round the clock trying to find leads, while some residents began pasting fliers up around town and in neighboring areas. By March 1, volunteers were lining up to distribute 10,000 fliers to Metra commuters at Chicago’s Union Station.

But that same day, police got a tip that the girl was at a Hinsdale coffee shop in the company of a boy. Some 63 hours after her disappearance, police found the girl and charged the 18-year-old boy in her company with harboring a runaway. The boy faces a January court date in DuPage County, according to Riverside police.

Demolition derby (March 7)

How far can a Dodge Ram truck fly? According to a Brookfield police report from March 7, it’s at least 127 feet.

According to that report, a truck going 45 mph down Prairie Avenue blew through a stop sign at Plainfield Road, struck a Toyota Camry and then went airborne and overturned, hitting the roof of a Chevy van parked 127 feet from the initial impact.

The truck continued skidding nearly 400 feet down Prairie Avenue, striking another car, losing its drive shaft and coming to rest in the front yard of a home. The truck, according to Fire Chief Patrick Lanzi resembled a “mangled beer can.” The driver of the truck, however, was reportedly walking around outside of his vehicle when paramedics arrived. Debris from the truck, meanwhile, damaged at least one other car. One of the truck’s tires damaged a handrail and picture window of one house in the 4500 block of Prairie Avenue.

Bad neighbors (June 6, Aug. 29)

Drug houses. The two words together are commonly associated with rundown areas of large cities, not suburban oases such as Riverside. Yet, in 2007, police raided two such operations, which police described as street-level drug houses.

In late May, a SWAT team and officers from a newly created suburban gang task force raided a condominium on Forest Avenue in downtown Riverside, seizing drugs, drug distribution equipment, a .45-caliber handgun and armor-piercing ammunition.

The man believed to be running the operation was not home at the time of the raid, but police recovered fingerprints from the handgun and sent them to the state crime lab. In mid-December, the results were finally processed, but state police could not obtain any usable fingerprints from the gun.

The man believed to have been running the drug operation remains at large.

In late August, police raided a two-flat on Northgate Court after finding 127 grams of cocaine in the car of a Cicero man who visited the two-flat on Aug. 24. On the next day, police went back to the two-flat with a search warrant. They arrested two men and reportedly recovered 14 grams of cocaine, scales and vials of anabolic steroids.

One of the three men arrested, 25-year-old Keith Hovorka, is now in Shawnee Correctional Center in downstate Shawnee, serving a five-year sentence for manufacture/delivery of cocaine.

No place to hide (June 6)

When running from police, it’s never a good idea to seek high ground. While the notion may be a cop movie staple, the climbing suspect provides drama, but, eventually, he’ll run out of room.

That’s exactly what happened on May 29 when a 16-year-old boy tried to elude capture after reportedly being found inside someone else’s car in the parking lot at the North Riverside Plaza. When the man who owned the car saw the boy in the back seat, the boy allegedly told the man and his daughter to get in the car and that he had a gun.

Then, the boy attempted to flee by climbing onto the roof of a nearby toy store, where he was captured without incident and charged with aggravated robbery, attempted vehicular hijacking and burglary to a motor vehicle.

A simple plan (Aug. 22)

This one is tough to boil down to a few sentences, but here’s the gist. Two guys get into a fight in a bar. Loser of said fight wants revenge and hatches a scheme to lure the winner into an ambush in dark and secluded Riverside.

The plan works and the winner is summarily jumped by the loser and three others outside First Presbyterian Church in Riverside. The loser is armed with a baseball bat, no less. So far, so good.

Problem is, winner wrestles bat out of loser’s hands and beats loser over the head with it. Loser ends up running to the Riverside police station, where he is later arrested and charged-along with three others-with battery.

Shots fired (Nov. 28)

Brookfield police were called to a strip mall at 47th Street and Plainfield Road on Nov. 19 to investigate a report of shots fired in the parking lot. Arriving on the scene, police located a 31-year-old Brookfield man trying to hide in the front seat of a pickup truck. When police opened the door of the truck, the man, reportedly highly intoxicated, fell out.

Inside the truck, police reportedly recovered a handgun, an empty ammunition clip and a machete. They also recovered spent shell casings on the ground outside the truck and inside the truck bed. Police found no one injured and no signs of damage, leading them to believe the man, identified as Dustin W. White, was simply firing the gun into the air.

White remains in Cook County Jail on $75,000 bond awaiting a Feb. 7 court date for weapons charges.