The fourth and final suspect has been arrested in the murder of retired firefighter Dwain Williams, who was killed in a Far South Side botched carjacking in early December.
Chicago Police Supt. David Brown announced Friday the suspect was arrested by the FBI in Pennsylvania on a separate warrant.
He was identified as Jaylen Saulsberry by the City of New Castle Police Department. The 19-year-old was being held at the Lawrence County Jail, according to a social media post from New Castle police.
“Great work by CPD detectives and federal law enforcement,” Brown said on Twitter.
He was held on a $2 million murder warrant, Brown said. Officials were seeking his extradition to Chicago.
Jaylen SaulsberryNew Castle Police arrest photo
Two teenagers and a 20-year-old man were already charged in the deadly Dec. 3 shooting outside the Let’s Get Poppin’ popcorn store at 11758 S. Western Ave. in Morgan Park.
Prosecutors have said the last suspect sought by police was the second gunman.
The defendants were part of a “carjacking crew” believed to be responsible for other crimes in the area, police have said.
Williams, a 65-year-old concealed-carry holder, was shot in the abdomen after he exchanged gunfire with his alleged attackers.
Williams retired from the fire department two years ago, officials said. He was about to return to work as a civilian employee at the Office of Emergency Management and Communications.
Another New Year but nothing is new and what is there to look forward to? What in this new year is going to make the past any better? What will tomorrow do to change yesterday? Don’t tell me to look at tomorrow with hope or optimism or tell me to just keep going because it will get easier. I’ve been doing that for too long already. The things that have happened cannot be changed. Things that were lost, people, relationships, time, cannot be recaptured. Time is linear and even if some things change in this new year those won’t, can’t change the past.
What is the point? There are people I lost, dead, buried and gone forever. Those hurt but not as much as the people I lost who are still living. Everyone says time heals but that’s not true. The more time it goes on, the worse it gets. It is like walking with a pebble in your shoe. Time makes the body form a callous that even after the pebble is gone makes every step painful. So, you go to the foot doctor and get the callous cut out. But how do you cut out the callous in your heart that causes pain with every beat?
Life is change, no question about it. We cannot avoid change but some changes are damned hard to bear. And they never get easier, particularly when they are changes we didn’t want. How do we correct, compensate for, make better changes we didn’t want, maybe didn’t even see coming? How do we go on living a life we didn’t and wouldn’t choose? How do we get back to who we were, where we were, what we were? Going forward on the path you’re on is too bleak to contemplate but the past is gone and all around is darkness, so what choice is left? That light at the end of the tunnel is illusion. Or a freight train laden with more pain barreling at you.
That is some pretty dark and scary stuff and are the thoughts of too many. I’ve written them out here because just about every person who has ever had these thoughts believes themselves to be the only one. Yeah, sure, others are or have been in a dark place too, but their darkness is different from mine is something we all think. It must be because others appear to be functioning better than me.
You’re right. There are differences, always, both in general and in the details. But, if there is any part of this that resonates with you, any part that feels like it was plucked from your own head, if these thoughts live in you more often than not, reach out. Most of us have these thoughts on occasion at least. I know I do. And it sucks. Sucks so wide and hard it feels like I’m a turd being flushed in a giant high-flow toilet. It can be so hard to resist the pull of those swirling thoughts, particularly when you can’t see a reason to bother.
I’m not here to give some brilliant, pithy answer that will make everything okay. Such a thing is not possible, at least in my book. But my book does say there are answers. The proof is I can look back and remember when thoughts like this circled, swirled and kept floating back up in the toilet bowl of my head.
How did I get myself over the rim I couldn’t even see much less have a hope of reaching in those moments? Sorry, buy my how and your how are going to look very different. But there is something I can tell you that does make a difference, does matter and most importantly, does work. There is a way.
You don’t have to see it, understand it, believe yourself worth the effort or even believe it is possible. Just accept it. There is a way and you are capable, worthy and deserving of finding it. It probably won’t look like what you envisioned as your future way back in your past before these thoughts stained the bowl but I can promise, I can guarantee that it is real, exists and is worthwhile. How? Because I’m living it. Because I’ve watched others, more than I can count, live it.
Here’s one other proof that a worthwhile future not only exists but you can achieve it…
You are a warrior. You showed a mental, physical and emotional toughness most of the population can’t even fathom, and that was while you were in basic training and didn’t know a fraction of your capabilities.
A warrior fights. A warrior never gives up. A warrior fights until he can fight no more. Then, a warrior allows his brothers and sisters to fight for him, to protect him, to care for him, to stand in the gap for him just as he swore to do for them.
You are a warrior. You took two Oaths, one public and one private. You swore publicly to protect and defend the Constitution. And you swore that private oath to care for your brothers and sisters. They took the same Oaths as you. Let them fulfill that profoundly sacred, private Oath.
Reach out. Talk. Talking about the things you don’t want to remember doesn’t ‘bring them to mind’. Talking about them with someone who knows what they’re doing literally rewires your brain, allowing those memories to move into the backseat where they no longer have access to the gas pedal, brake or steering wheel. Yes, the memories will always be there but like an annoying passenger in the backseat of a cab, you can raise the partition to block out their noise; you’ll still see them but maybe, in time, even become amused at the thought the reactions they try to provoke in you are a faint shadow of what they once were.
Talk. If you are talking to someone and it’s not working, tell them that. Straight out. Tell them they are not helping you. Any clinician worth their salt will welcome that information.
If you stopped going because you believe talking doesn’t work because you tried one, or even several times, Good news! There are more than seventy, 70!, validated, empirically supported methodologies for working with trauma. Try another. Or are you one of those people who would try on a pair of pants and because they didn’t fit, decide pants are stupid and a waste of time?
The real truth about talking is it’s not about the methodology anyway. It is about the relationship, the bond, the trust you develop with a clinician. Professionals that don’t admit this are the ones to avoid, because it is proven that your comfort and confidence in them is the single most important factor by a measure of more than two-to-one. So, make the effort, find someone you think you may be able to trust. If that one doesn’t work out, find another. Yeah, that’s a lot of effort to expend when you don’t feel like you have any effort to expend. It may take time. But, those stains on the toilet bowl that is your brain pan didn’t form overnight either.
Views and opinions from the Gold Star, Military and Veteran perspective are generally different from those of the civilian world. Much of what I write is “their” stories, as told to me as the Gold Star Mother of PFC Andrew Meari, KIA 11/1/10 in Kandahar, Afghanistan. This is how I continue to honor the Oath my son took.
I don’t like labels or boxes as the former is insufficient to describe a person and the latter limits a person but if you insist, call me a Progressive Republican. I believe in this country, our Constitution and above all, in the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I believe our government is supposed to serve the people, not tell them how to live.
To me, this is just common sense but since it seems to be a minority opinion, it has become “Uncommon Sense”.
Joe Biden’s misplaced criticism of President Donald Trump’s supposed failure to distribute tens of millions of COVID-19 vaccinations would have been like Republican presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey criticizing President Franklin Roosevelt because the D-Day landings in 1944 didn’t get American troops into Berlin fast enough.
Whatever you think about Trump, the distribution of enough doses of the vaccine to inoculate hundreds of millions of Americans is an historic triumph. It’s no understatement by the administration to compare it to the logistical marvel that enabled the United States to win World War II.
In remarks in Delaware Tuesday afternoon, Biden accused the outgoing administration of being “far behind” in delivering what’s needed and what was promised, saying at the current rate, if would take years, not months, for all Americans to get vaccinated.
“A few weeks ago, the Trump administration suggested that 20 million Americans could be vaccinated by the end of December. With only a few days left in December, we’ve only vaccinated a few million so far. And the pace of the vaccination program is moving now, as it — if it continues to move as it is now, it’s going to take years, not months, to vaccinate the American people,” Biden warned
Wow! Having only 11 million doses delivered and ready to be administered (by the states, by the way) surely is a sign of a complete flop of Operation Warp Speed.
Overpromising is one of Trump’s sins, but discovering, testing, producing and delivering the vaccine is a scientific and logistical miracle of historic proportions. It was accomplished under the direction of the Trump administration, by God, and to criticize him for not doing enough is risible and ignorant.
Nonetheless, it didn’t stop the Cellar-in-Chief from saying what he would have done differently and better. For Biden having a plan basically amounts to saying he has a plan. And little else.
Is Biden going to spend his four years (or less) in office still in full campaign mode, much as Democrats used to say “It’s Bush’s fault” and how Trump routinely blamed Barack Obama for the nation’s problems?
Sadly, it’ll be all the same for the media that has dutifully parroted Biden’s bitching by reporting as fact that the vaccinations are “slow to reach the arms of Americans” and has been marked by “chaos and confusion.”
It is yet another example of how today’s media live in a fictional world, devoid of understanding the experience of what it takes to do something as simple (we’re supposed to think) to get 330 million Americans armored against the worst pandemic in a century.
Biden promises to administer 100 million shots in the first 100 days of his administration. We share see. If he does, it will be thanks to the planning and execution of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed.
To subscribe to the Barbershop, type your email Address the address s in the box and click the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.
I have a love-hate relationship with The Crown, the smash Netflix original drama that chronicles the life of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and her family. One of the things that made the series such a sensation when it first aired was the concept of dramatizing the lives of very famous people who are still very much with us. It seemed, to me, incredibly brash. What must the royal family think of it? Clearly the creators have to be making up some of these intimate conversations and situations, which only a fly on the wall could be privy to.
The debut season was brilliant, as they say in England, and the second season was pretty darn good too. The original cast, led by the excellent Clare Foy as a vulnerable young Princess and then Queen Elizabeth torn between her obligations as a wife and mother and her destiny as British sovereign, was almost perfect. With the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, sulking in luxurious exile in Paris, as snarky supporting characters, the show was like crack, at least for American royal watchers and Anglophiles like me.
Beginning in the third season, The Crown’s creators decided to switch the original cast out with older actors. Frankly, I wish they had used digital aging technology and just kept the first cast, including Vanessa Kirby as the queen’s rebellious and brokenhearted younger sister, Princess Margaret. Much as I love Helena Bonham Carter in every other role she’s done, I feel she’s miscast here—and wasted.
Yes, I have issues with the second cast. My favorite casting choice by far is Josh O’Connor, who convincingly plays a young Prince Charles; I don’t comprehend the resistance to him by some in the media. In season three, as a very young man, he was portrayed as a sympathetic figure. In season four (the “Diana” season), more of a cad. And couldn’t the producers have found a less mousy-seeming actress to fill the role of the leggy, stunningly-supermodel-like-in-real-life Princess Diana? (Sorry to say it but it’s true.)
I enjoy Gillian (“X-Files”) Anderson’s portrayal of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, which seems to put me in the minority.
With each season, The Crown seems to grow colder and lose a little more of its soul. To me, the prim Olivia Coleman as the queen strips away most of the humanity, warmth, and vulnerability that Clare Foy brought to the role. But it’s more than that. By season four, the royal family has become so lacking in redeeming qualities that one has to wonder if Peter Morgan, the show’s creator (and screenwriter of 2006’s “The Queen” starring Helen Mirren) even likes these people.
For the sake of full disclosure, I have only watched through episode six of the fourth season as of this writing, a little more than halfway through. I’m not the binge-watching type, and even if I were, I could not binge on something this depressing.
By the end of episode two, the Windsors came across as such a narcissistic, insufferable lot that I agreed wholeheartedly with Anderson’s Thatcher when she concluded, “These people aren’t elegant, they’re boorish.”
In the fourth episode, Coleman’s Queen Elizabeth suddenly discovered she had two younger sons, Andrew and Edward. They had not been seen nor spoken of since the episodes in which they were born, in season two. By episode six, they seem to have conveniently vanished as quickly as they appeared.
Episode three, which covered Charles and Diana’s engagement, was so bleak as to make me desperate for something, anything, to lighten things up even a little. I refuse to believe, despite Camilla, that Diana was miserable literally the entire time or had not one moment of tenderness with Charles. And why do we never see nor hear of her parents or siblings? Or her flamboyant “wicked” stepmother Raine?
Season four is so controversial in its depiction of Princess Diana and her troubled marriage to Charles, and other events surrounding the family and prime minister Thatcher, that it’s prompted some in Britain, including the British Culture Secretary and the late princess’s brother, to demand that episodes of The Crown be preceded by a disclaimer that the content is largely fiction.
But by far, the number-one thing that bothers me most about The Crown is its total lack of cultural context, which seems deliberate on the part of the show’s makers. The series takes place in a vacuum as to any social movement going on outside the royal bubble. In reality, Elizabeth’s reign saw London become the fashion and music capital of the world in the 1960s with Beatlemania and the British Invasion, then the epicenter of the Punk scene in the Seventies, but you won’t find any hint of this on The Crown.
The Beatles reportedly went to Buckingham Palace for an audience with the queen in 1965, but this was completely absent from season three, the season that covered the Sixties. Instead, we were treated to an entire episode dedicated to the (American) Apollo-11 moon landing and Prince Philip’s meeting with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren. It’s baffling.
The Fab Who?
In the Charles-Diana engagement episode described above, the soundtrack the show’s producers opted to use was not The Police, The Clash, or any British band from the early-1980s era but…wait for it…Edge of Seventeen by Stevie Nicks. It’s head-scratching stuff.
(I realize seemingly trivial points like this don’t matter to some viewers, but they matter to me. Maybe because I was a teenager in the early Charles-&-Diana years and had a burgeoning awareness of music, fashion, and culture.)
You would never know the Sex Pistols burst onto the scene in 1976 with a song called God Save the Queen and put a safety pin through Her Majesty’s nose.
Instead, the show hyper-focuses on British politics and political figures. Some of that is necessary (John Lithgow’s Churchill was terrific), but this comes at the extreme expense of British culture. You can’t completely divorce Elizabeth II’s 67-year reign from the larger culture happening outside her palace walls and pretend the royal family was immune to it and not somehow influenced by it.
Morgan’s “The Queen” was really more about Prime Minister Tony Blair than it was about the title character. In addition to being a political junkie to a fault, Morgan seems hung up on minor curiosities and oddities from Windsor history. It was interesting, in season three, to learn about Prince Philip’s mother the eccentric Greek nun, a story that few know of. But I’m not sure we needed an entire episode devoted to Michael Fagan, the unemployed British man who in 1982 scaled the Buckingham Palace fence and invaded the queen’s bedroom, which is what we get in season four. Clearly, Morgan was using the episode to make purely political points.
One period show about British nobility that gave its viewers glimpses of changes in the culture at large and did it in a masterful way was Downton Abbey. It felt as if the show’s creator Julian Fellowes, unlike Morgan, actually liked all his characters…despite their flaws. Granted, Fellowes was working with fictitious characters that can be redeemed in a way real-life ones can’t. Sometimes I wish he was writing The Crown.
The series that launched with an inaugural season that was very near perfect has reduced the queen and her family almost to pitiable caricatures. If it’s designed to make me grateful I’m not one of them, well, I already kind of was. But the show is just one continuous downer. I feel each episode ought to come with a side of Prozac and shot of tequila.
I’ll watch the remainder of the fourth season, and probably the next which is reportedly the final one, although with diminishing enthusiasm. If for no other reason than it’s pure eye and mind candy—escapism—which good TV is supposed to be. I’m not sure how far out the series is supposed to go, but I’m dreading Megxit already.
I’m an Illinois-licensed attorney hoping to break down timely legal stories for a general audience in terms they can understand. My goal is to report some of those overlooked legal cases and issues that fly under the radar of most of the general news media, but that still might be of interest and consequence to average people. Thanks for reading!
The fourth and final suspect has been arrested in the murder of retired firefighter Dwain Williams, who was killed in a Far South Side botched carjacking in early December.
Chicago Police Supt. David Brown announced Friday that the suspect was arrested by the FBI in Pennsylvania on a separate warrant.
“Great work by CPD detectives and federal law enforcement,” Brown said on Twitter.
The suspect, whose name wasn’t released, was held on a $2 million murder warrant, Brown said. Officials were seeking his extradition to Chicago.
A police spokesman was unable to provide additional details.
Two teenagers and a 20-year-old man are already charged in the deadly Dec. 3 shooting outside the Let’s Get Poppin’ popcorn store at 11758 S. Western Ave. in Morgan Park.
Prosecutors have said the last suspect sought by police was the second gunman, a juvenile.
The suspects were part of a “carjacking crew” believed to be responsible for other crimes in the area, police have said.
Williams, a 65-year-old concealed-carry holder, was shot in the abdomen after he exchanged gunfire with his alleged attackers.
Williams retired from the fire department two years ago, officials said. He was about to return to work as a civilian employee at the Office of Emergency Management and Communications.
When high school basketball fans think back to the 1980s, programs like Quincy, Providence St. Mel, East St. Louis Lincoln and the arrival of city powers King and Simeon are easy to think back on.
The 1990s brought us memorable basketball giants in Peoria Manual and Thornton, a few steamrolling Proviso East teams and the continued dominance of King.
The first 10 years of the 2000s included Glenbrook North, Peoria High and the beginning of a Simeon juggernaut.
Now, with the calendar inching closer to wrapping up an unforgettable 2020, the end of this month closes out another decade. And it’s another high school basketball time period to look back on.
Earlier this year we broke down the decade’s best teams and best players. Now, with every season of the past decade complete, it’s time to look at the Chicago area programs who won the most.
This list is comprised of the 50 winningest programs over the past 10 years, starting with the 2010-11 season and concluding with the 2019-20 season. Every team in every class throughout the Chicago area will be broken down in a variety of ways. But total wins, with winning percentage used as tie-breaker, determined the rankings.
We present No. 39 Neuqua Valleyt today and will add one program a day going forward.
39. NEUQUA VALLEY: 189-119
Decade’s biggest storyline: The 2012-13 season, which began with a program-best 15-0 record to start the season, was a memorable one. It included winning 28 games — the second most in program history — an Upstate Eight Valley Conference championship and a regional title.
Plus, Neuqua, led that season by standout point guard Jabari Sandifer, enjoyed the added pleasure of beating rival Waubonsie Valley three times in a season, including a 69-61 win in the regional championship. The Wildcats ultimately fell to Benet in the sectional semifinals.
Underrated decade highlight: The record-breaking John Poulakidas. The Player of the Decade, Poulakidas, who is a current senior headed to Yale next year, is just 70 points shy of breaking the career scoring record with a season to play. In three seasons the 6-5 wing has scored 1,221 career points. Poulakidas also set the single-game scoring record this past season when he went for 49 points against Bolingbrook.
Neuqua Valley’s Jabari Sandifer passes the ball during their game against East Aurora in 2011.Sun-Times file photo
Player of the Decade: John Poulakidas (2021)
All-Decade Team: Jabari Sandifer (2013), Connor Raridon (2014), Demond George (2015), Blaise Meredith (2017) and John Poulakidas (2021)
Other decade news and highlights
-The Wildcats won conference championships in 2013, 2014 and 2015 while winning regional titles in 2013, 2015 and 2020.
-The 2014-15 team reached the sectional championship game where it lost 59-56 to Bolingbrook.
-Jabari Sandifer, who went on to play at Western Illinois, set the the career record for most assists with 370.
-Neuqua is following up a previous decade in which it averaged 24 wins a season.
Latte and Mocha are a pair of adorable, sweet and fun four-year-old, male smooth coat guinea pig brothers looking for a loving guardian together.
These boys were relinquished to Friends of Petraits Rescue by a family that could no longer care for them.,
Guinea pigs are happiest in pairs, and Latte and Mocha are best friends and have been together since they were babies.
Guinea pigs eat a diet of unlimited Timothy and Orchard hays. They are currently eating just a handful of guinea pig pellets, and a lot of fresh vegetables including romaine, red leaf and green leaf lettuces, cilantro, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, etc. Guinea pigs, just like humans, can’t manufacture their own vitamin C, so they need to supplement with red pepper, orange slices, and many other vitamin C-rich foods.
Please read up on guinea pig care and diet before adopting by visiting this excellent web site http://www.guinealynx.info/.
The boys would love a home with people who will handle them daily, keep them well fed, and keep their habitat nice and clean.
If you’re interested in meeting and possibly adopting Latte and Mocha, please fill out an adoption application at https://friendsofpetraits.com/guinea-pig-adoption-application/ and follow up by e-mailing [email protected] to make an appointment to meet them.
They are being fostered in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood.
Their adoption fee of $75 as a pair benefits the Friends of Petraits Rescue. For an additional $75, we’ll include a package of absolutely everything you need to care for them including a large cage, pellets, litter, hay, hidey huts, and water bottle.
And, yes … Friends of Petraits is handling masked, minimum contact, socially distant adoptions.
Beavers, Illinois’ largest rodents, are in city lagoons, rivers and streams. They’re on Instagram, and TikTok. Sometimes a nuisance, and at others a welcomed presence, beavers have found respite all over the state, a switch from when they were wiped out by hunters and a sign that water quality and habitat possibilities have long been on the upswing. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)
This is the most important week of the Chicago Bears’ 2020 season.
It all comes down to this, and quite frankly, Green Bay Packers fans wouldn’t have it any other way. They relish in these opportunities to beat the Chicago Bears and send them packing. Sunday, that’s exactly what they’ll aim to do.
For the Bears, it’s been a tumultuous ride this season. They began what looked like a promising season at 5-1 and atop the NFC North. What happened next was like a bad dream for Bears fans.
Chicago spiraled downward after losing six in a row and wound up 5-7, on the outside looking in at the playoff picture. Now at 8-7, it’s pretty simple.
The Bears win and they’re in. Easy as that.
But, it’s not that easy. In order to win, they’ll have to slow down who will likely be the league MVP this year in Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. His running mates, Aaron Jones and Davante Adams, are in the upper echelon of both their position groups this year.
The Packers’ offense has truly been lighting it up in 2020. Meanwhile, the Bears’ offense has just begun to hit its stride under Mitchell Trubisky and his second attempt at the starting quarterback.
Frankly, it’s impressive the Bears have gotten themselves back into the thick of the playoff race. After losing their sixth straight, things looked as though this was one of the worst teams in the NFL. The Bears were consistently laughed at and the butt of many jokes around the league.
But now, the Bears are out to stop the laughter for real. With a win over the Packers, they’re in the postseason. To do so, they’ll need monster games out of these players.
Greetings, normally I would have been standing at The Chicago River Walk filming for the New Year fireworks. Unfortunately due to the current situation that did not happen for 2020.
However I decided to put together a compilation of the past four years filming the fireworks from different angles. I have provided a link so you could enjoy watching the fireworks and all the festivities.
My name is Frank G, I am a photographer/musician. The main subject in my night photography includes the heavy metal music scene here in the mid-west. I will also showcase events and concerts in the Chicago land area. A few landscape photos and candid street photography can also be viewed by visiting my galleries on Flickr and Facebook.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22208750/Jaylen_Saulsberry.jpg)
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22208224/eaurBBKneuq_NAP_0305_05.jpg)
Leave a comment