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Serving DeKalb County since 1879
Saturday, August 31, 2013
FIRST DAY • LOCAL, A4
NIU WRAP • INSIDE
Corn Fest shined Huskies itching to take field after Orange Bowl loss before rain came
NIU, DeKalb police regimes eye cooperation
PREP FOOTBALL
By JILLIAN DUCHNOWSKI jduchnowski@shawmedia.com
WASHED OUT Rob Winner – rwinner@shawmedia.com
Greg True Field, home of St. Edward, is left empty after severe weather canceled Genoa-Kingston’s first game of the season Friday night in Elgin. Because of lighting restrictions in the neighborhood and continued lightning in the area the game had to be postponed.
Storms delay Corn Fest, start of prep football season By JOHN SAHLY jsahly@shawmedia.com Corn Fest is scheduled for a laser show at 8:30 p.m. today. Nature put on its own throughout Friday night. A severe thunderstorm blanketed the area Friday night, with a torrential downpour, lightning and wind gusts topping 60 mph. The storm caused Corn Fest in downtown DeKalb to be delayed, along with several high school season-opening football games. Corn Fest reopened at 8:30 Friday night, festival Chairwoman Lisa Angel said, with the carnival and soundstage. Back Country Roads and AudioDrive were scheduled to go
on late Friday night for those who stayed in the downtown area. People had to evacuate into the restaurants, stores and Egyptian Theatre nearby during the storm. “People are not leaving, that’s the great thing,” Angel said. As of 8:15 p.m. Friday, 2.45 inches of rain had fallen in DeKalb in just a few hours. Gilbert Sebenste, staff meteorologist at Northern Illinois University, said it’s not unusual to see as many flashes of lightning in a storm such as Friday night’s. “It was very impressive,” Sebenste said. “When it gets this extremely hot and humid with a cold front moving it, storms can build up to a height of 60,000 feet. The higher they
go and this is not an absolute rule but the higher they go, they can tend to produce more lightning.” On a football field at Elgin St. Edward High School, Genoa-Kingston coach Travis Frederick was disappointed the Cogs had to reschedule their game for 7 p.m. tonight. “I was talking to their coaches, too. The kids have been ready to play,” Frederick said. “They’ve been dying to play someone else besides themselves. You get all geeked up, and then we pulled the rug out from under them. It’s kind of deflating, but they’ll be fine [today].” Sebenste said today’s weather should be nice, with lower humidity and a high of 85, while Sunday has the potential for more severe weather and a high of 90.
4 area firms on the Illinois Tollway’s ‘wall of shame’ By CHRIS BURROWS
Online
cburrows@shawmedia.com HINCKLEY – The Illinois Tollway is firing back at companies it says have routinely failed to pay tolls with an online “wall of shame” that includes four DeKalb County-based businesses. The agency posted the names and amounts it says are owed by 157 so-called “super scofflaws” in
To see a list of the tollway’s top toll violators as of Aug. 28, 2013 visit. www.illinoistollway.com/tolls-and-ipass/violations/super-scofflaws
an effort to shame them into paying up. The list includes offenders that owe more than $1,000 in tolls and fines, and is topped by a
Frankfort-based company named Landa Transport that the agency says owes $214,859. The offenders owe $3.7 million, the toll authority says. “The tollway is committed to using every option available to us to try to collect millions of dollars in unpaid tolls and fines from delinquent drivers,” Tollway Executive Director Kristi Lafleur said. Many of the companies appear
to be bankrupt or out of business. Four companies from DeKalb County owe a combined $280,000 according to the website. Steve’s Underdog Trucking of Hinckley makes up the lion’s share of that figure. The tollway says the company owes $192,742 in unpaid tolls and penalties – second-most of any company in the state.
See TOLLS, page A10
Syrians bracing for possible U.S. strike By DAVID ESPO and ELAINE GANLEY The Associated Press WASHINGTON – Edging toward a punitive strike against Syria, President Barack Obama said Friday he is weighing “limited and narrow” action as the administration bluntly accused Bashar Assad’s government of launching a chemical weapons attack that killed at least 1,429
people – far more than previous estimates – including more than 400 children. No “boots on the ground,” Obama said, seeking to reassure Americans weary after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. With France as his only major public ally, Obama told reporters he has a strong preference for multilateral action. He added, “Frankly, part of the challenge we end up with here is a lot of
people think something should be done but nobody wants to do it.” Halfway around the world, U.S. warships were in place in the Mediterranean Sea. They carried cruise missiles, long a first-line weapon of choice for presidents because they can find a target hundreds of miles distant without need of air cover or troops on the ground.
See SYRIA, page A4
AP photo
President Barack Obama meets with his national security staff to discuss the situation in Syria on Friday in the Situation Room of the White House in Washington.
DeKALB – Local police aren’t happy that two female Northern Illinois University students were robbed at gunpoint as they walked home about 10 p.m. Thursday. They are pleased, though, with the interaction between the NIU and DeKalb police who responded. The emergency cellphone call went to DeKalb dispatchers, but both NIU and DeKalb officers immediately headed to the 900 block of Crane Drive to search for the offender and help the women, whose purses were Gene Lowery stolen. The women weren’t physically injured, but they gave police a description of the man and which way he went. By Friday afternoon, one of the women was working with a sketch artist to try to develop an image of the Tom Phillips offender. “We have a plan every night,” said Bill Nicklas, Can you NIU’s vice president for pubhelp? lic safety and community relations. “We know what we • The crime: A can know about people who man displayed might be operating in the a gun about area, and we do our very best 9:50 p.m. to prevent any of that. ... It’s Thursday and just a stain on the communitook purses ty whenever this happens, from two and we don’t like it.” women Leaders with both po• The descriplice departments want to tion: A 6-foot strengthen their partnership, especially in the area tall black man near this incident where so with a slender many students live. Their build and short joint efforts have been buildhair, wearing ing since late 2011, but both a black shirt sides want to do more togethand long, dark er once NIU’s new Police blue basketball Chief Thomas Phillips starts shorts Sept. 16. • His escape The University of Chiroute: Went cago Police Department, east on Crane where Phillips has worked Drive, then since 2012, is a role model north on Russell within the law enforcement Road toward community for how it colGreenbrier laborates with the Chicago Road Police Department, DeKalb • Who to Police Chief Gene Lowery call: DeKalb said. Lowery is eager to learn police at how Phillips’ experience in 815-748-8400, Chicago’s racially and ecoNIU police at nomically diverse Hyde Park neighborhood can be applied 815-753-1212 or in and around DeKalb. DeKalb County For his part, Phillips Crime Stoppers wants to build stronger reat 815-895lationships with area police 3272. departments; it was a topic that repeatedly came up as Video he met with community and online university representatives during his job interviews. Meet new “To bring that to the next level, we need to continue to NIU Police Chief do those things and look at Tom Phillips at different models of where we daily-chronican improve,” Phillips said. cle.com. “I think having an open environment for other agencies to work collaboratively with is very important, and I think listening and hearing what the community needs will provide us the answers.”
See NIU POLICE, page A10
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