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Man pleads guilty to battery
STANLEY CUP FINAL, GAME 6: BLACKHAWKS 2, LIGHTNING 0
Ex-nursing assistant maintains innocence in nursing home case By CHELSEA McDOUGALL cmcdougall@shawmedia.com
Q Despite stormy weather, anticipation surrounds United Center before Game 6
WOODSTOCK – After four years and two mistrials, a former health care worker accused of sexually assaulting an elderly patient at a Crystal Lake nursing home entered a plea agreement to a lesser charge. Angelo J. Bird, 26, now of Poplar Grove, was facing between six and 30 years in prison on allegations he inappropriately touched a 93-yearold woman at Crystal Pines Nursing Home in 2011. At the time, Bird was a certified nursing assistant at the facility. On Monday, he pleaded guilty to aggravated battery, although he maintains his innocence. His guilty plea means if the case went to trial Angelo Bird for a third time, prosecutors would have enough evidence to convict him. Bird was not immediately remanded to custody, but he is to appear in court June 24 and spend the next 59 days in McHenry County Jail. After serving jail time, he was ordered to complete two years of reporting probation. Bird, formerly of Woodstock, will not be required to register as a sex offender. A previous evaluation indicated he was not in need of further sex offender treatment or counseling. McHenry County Judge Michael Feetterer accepted the plea agreement. “In light of all the circumstances and everything that’s happened in the past four years, he’s ready to move on with his life,” defense attorney Jamie Wombacher said. Assistant State’s Attorney Sharyl Eisenstein said the agreement was “an appropriate resolution to the case based on the history that we’ve had.” Bird’s case twice had gone before a jury and, both times ending in mistrial after state’s witnesses violated the judge’s orders. In both trials, U.S. Secret Service agents who administered a polygraph examination on Bird mentioned the test to the jury despite Feetterer previously barring any mention of it. In Illinois courts, such testimony is generally
STANLEY CUP COVERAGE IN SPORTS
See BIRD, page A4
The Blackhawks’ Jonathan Toews hoists the Stanley Cup after defeating the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final on Monday in Chicago. The Hawks defeated the Lightning, 2-0, to win the series, 4-2. AP photo
STANLEY CUP CHAMPIONS Q
Blackhawks shut out Tampa Bay, take home 3rd trophy in 6 years
AP photo
Q Morrissey: Hawks the better team, even if it took 6 hard games to figure it out
County Board poised to resolve nondedicated road struggle By KEVIN P. CRAVER kcraver@shawmedia.com A seven-year struggle by some residents along nondedicated roads who pay township road taxes but get nothing in return is heading for a successful conclusion. The McHenry County Board on Tuesday evening is set to create a program by which such roads can get repaired and brought up to standards so their respective
If you go The County Board meets at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the McHenry County Administration Building, 667 Ware Road, Woodstock.
township highway departments will add them to their network of maintained roadways. A successful County Board vote would allocate slightly more than $8 million
over five years to do so. “[It’s] generous, highly appreciated, genuinely deserved, and it’s going to clean up a mess that’s been there for more than a century,” coalition president Ned Neumann said. Nondedicated roads, some of which date back a century or more, are public roads that do not fall under any government’s responsibility to maintain them. In short, while residents along these roads pay
taxes for road maintenance, they do not see any benefit from it. About 50 centerline miles of them exist, according to a 2014 survey by the McHenry County Division of Transportation, with most in Algonquin, McHenry and Nunda townships and a few miles in Dorr Township. Residents along 23 miles of those roads want those roads to be improved and become part of a public jurisdiction,
the survey found. Most want to be incorporated into their local township’s road system. Coalition members decided to approach the County Board to get the problem resolved after their respective township highway departments told them their roads would have to be brought up to township standards before they could be added to the network. In some of the older areas, platted 100 years or longer ago, road widths are too
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narrow to widen. The county program would fund paving, engineering, construction, curb and gutter, signage and related activities needed to help bring a participating nondedicated road into a public jurisdiction. The resolution sets aside $280,000 for the current 2015 fiscal year, $2.5 million a year for the next three fiscal years and $280,000 in 2019. Unused funds will be rolled over until the program is ended.
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