CHICAGO – Investigators are still trying to determine how a firearm surrendered by an inmate at the Cook County Jail last week was brought into the facility.
Officials said Kemari handed Johnson, 18, a loaded handgun and ammunition magazine while being fitted with an ankle monitor shortly before he was scheduled to be released last Wednesday.
“Can I hand something in?” he supposedly asked before reaching into his pocket and crotch to pull out the contraband.
A source familiar with the case said officials believe Johnson found the relatively small gun in a waiting area shortly before returning it.
“That gun he found was under a couch in an old reception room,” the source said. “He found it and he should have just left it behind… It’s not even his gun.”
Ask about the accuracy of the source’s information. A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said Tuesday that investigators currently “believe the weapon was recovered in a bullpen in the reception area.”
The office is still trying to determine how and when the weapon was brought into the facility, but the source believed it had been there for more than a week. Surveillance cameras monitor the storage area, but the footage has yet to provide “clear evidence” of how the gun entered the storage space or how Johnson came to possess it.
“It was found in an area of the prison where both new arrivals are processed for admission and individuals being discharged are processed for release,” the spokesperson said. “Without speaking to this case, it is not unusual for us to find contraband in this area.”
Judge Shauna Boliker ordered Johnson held after hearing about the charges Friday afternoon. Boliker wrote in a detention order: “Everyone [Johnson] those we encountered were at risk: the public, the workers, the inmates and the guards who keep everyone safe.”
She ordered the detention in part because Johnson was so “brazen and audacious as to have a firearm in the correctional facility for eight days.”
Prosecutors didn’t even tell Boliker that Johnson had the firearm with him during his entire eight-day stay after he was arrested for allegedly assaulting a Chicago police officer. The judge apparently drew that conclusion on his own.
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