Man charged after Chicago firefighters' personal vehicles are damaged at multiple sites
A man was arrested and charged after the vehicles of several Chicago firefighters were damaged at multiple locations on Chicago's South Side.
Jacob Bogdan, 26, of the Englewood neighborhood, was charged with two felony counts of criminal damage to government property and 19 felony counts of criminal damage to property.
He was arrested Saturday in the 200 block of West Cermak Road, police said.
In the most recent incident in which Bogdan was charged, Chicago police confirmed seven parked vehicles were damaged in the first block of West 59th Street in the Washington Park neighborhood just before 6 a.m. this past Friday morning.
The incident was caught on surveillance video, which shows a suspect using an axe to damage several cars. Glass littered the ground from smashed windows. Some cars even had holes in their hoods.
"He did it in between shifts. Thankfully, he didn't run into any firemen because that would not have been good, because they would not have taken that," Chicago Fire Fighters Union Local 2 President Patrick Cleary said. "He's obviously mad about something, or maybe he's just mentally ill, and it has nothing to do with the Fire Department."
It was the second time within a week that someone has damaged firefighters' personal vehicles. Four days earlier, cars also were damaged outside a fire station in Bronzeville.
Police issued a community alert on Friday regarding four criminal property damage incidents outside firehouses since Feb. 5.
According to the alerts, someone used an unknown object to damage the windows of government property in the 200 block of West Cermak Road Chinatown, twice in the 100 block of East Pershing Road Bronzeville, and in the incident on Friday in Washington Park.
Based on the surveillance video, that object appears to be an axe.
Bogdan was due for a detention hearing in Cook County Criminal Court on Sunday.
The video above is from a previous report.