A man in a neon “peacekeeper” vest was arrested for brutally beating and robbing a man in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago Friday night.
The suspect, 31-year-old Oscar Montes, along with a group of other men, was caught on police surveillance video pulling a man from a car and beating him.
When officers arrived, Montes could be seen trying to remove the ”peacekeeper” vest while fleeing the area.
Last week, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) announced that he was deploying outreach workers, wearing neon yellow “Peacekeeper” vests onto the streets of Chicago in an effort to reduce violent crimes in the city during Memorial Day weekend.
The Chicago Sun Times reported:
A man in a neon “peacekeepers” vest beat up and robbed a man in Little Village on Friday night, police said, as dozens of violence prevention workers fanned out across Chicago over the Memorial Day weekend.
Oscar Montes, 31, was in a group of seven or eight people that pulled a man from a car and punched and kicked him on the ground in the 2300 block of South Washtenaw Avenue, Cook County prosecutors said in a Sunday bond hearing.
Montes took the man’s cellphone and struck him over the head with it, and another person stole the man’s wallet, prosecutors said.
The man’s face and ribs were fractured, and his eye was damaged to the point that he suffered partial blindness, prosecutors said.
Officers watching the attack on video from a police surveillance camera dispatched officers who were nearby tending a large crowd, prosecutors said. Montes was allegedly seen by officers throwing the stolen cellphone in the street as he left.
When officers arrived, they saw Montes walking away and trying to take off a neon vest that read “peacekeepers,” according to a police report. No one in court Sunday mentioned a peacekeepers vest or a connection to an anti-violence organization.
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Montes was held on no bail by Judge Maryam Ahmad on charges of aggravated battery, robbery and vehicular invasion.
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He was released from an Illinois prison last May following an aggravated discharge of a firearm conviction. In that case, from 2012, prosecutors charged him with attempted murder. But Montes accepted a plea deal of 12 years in prison for just the discharge charge.
