A Cook County judge and a sheriff’s deputy tackled a defendant who tried to run out of a courtroom Friday at the Leighton Criminal Court Building at 26thStreet and California Avenue.
The drama began after Judge Nicholas Ford said he would increase bond for Vongia Weathers, 32, for testing positive for marijuana, cocaine, methadone and heroin, and violating terms of his bond, according to the judge. Weathers had been free on bail on a charge of driving with a revoked or suspended license.
“He almost immediately became violently opposed to what was going on,” Ford said in a phone interview. “He shoved and punched a deputy and attempted to leave the courtroom.”
As Deputy Fred Holcomb grappled with Weathers, the judge ran down from the bench and helped bring him to the floor near the first row of benches at the front of Courtroom 702, Ford said.
“We were rolling around for five minutes,” he said. “It took every bit of both of our strength just to keep him there. His family was screaming. It was complete craziness.”
Although Weathers stands 5-foot-9, he weighs 245 pounds, according to Cook County Jail records.
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In 2008 Quick Nick was in the news....
Quick Judge Nick Ford : ‘I’m a judge! Just lay down, we’re going to wait for the police’
The lawyer-turned-superhero genre makes great Law Blog fodder. Remember Faegre & Benson’s Keith Radtke? Last year, he pinned down a gunmanwho’d entered his family’s home. And then there’s Coughlin Stoia’s Paul Geller. He saved a pregnant woman and her small schnauzer from two attacking pitbulls.
But how about a judge-turned-tough-guy? And suppose that judge, who’s known around the courthouse as “Quick Nick” for his tough sentences, thwarts a break-in of his wife’s car by tackling one of the suspects and holding him until police arrived. A Loyal Reader has forwarded us just such a dispatch from Chicago.
Here it is, directly from the Trib’s Breaking News blog:
- After [Judge Nicholas Ford] yelled at the intruders, Ford said the two men bolted from the vehicle in opposite directions, with Ford taking off after one of them and tackling him in the 3800 block of North Leavitt Street.
“I had him down on the ground, saying, ‘I’m a judge! Just lay down, we’re going to wait for the police,’ ” Ford, 44, said this morning.
The suspect continued to struggle, however, elbowing Ford in the head and neck and knocking the judge off him, Ford said.
As the suspect ran again, the judge gave chase while yelling to neighbors to call police.
“I was thinking, ‘I’m not gonna catch this guy,’ [but] I started gaining ground on him,” the judge said.
Ford again caught up to the 21-year-old suspect another block or two away, in front of his barber’s house, as it turned out, and a couple of neighbors helped hold the suspect until Chicago police officers arrived. . . .
This morning, hoarse from screaming, his hand swollen to twice its normal size and his neck “pretty screwed up,” Ford said he was thankful to the responding officers and his neighbors for helping him.
“I’m just fortunate to have been able to do it,” Ford said, noting the suspect he had chased down was 23 years his junior. “When I got home, I told my wife, ‘Miracles happen every day.’”
Ford’s wife, who’s also a Cook County judge, apparently found some loose change and other items were missing from her car.
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