Less than two weeks after a judge agreed to put kidnapping suspect Luis Palomar on home-monitoring instead of keeping him in jail, the 18-year-old from Lake in the Hills finds himself back in custody after a Kane County grand jury hit him with a five-count drug indictment, court records show.
The Sept. 20 indictment, which was initially sealed, accuses Palomar of possessing and selling cocaine in Elgin in late June. He is in Kane County Jail on $500,000 bail with a Friday court appearance scheduled.
Palomar was first charged earlier this year in connection to a February kidnapping and attack on a woman he once dated, according to records. Authorities have said the woman had been with Palomar at an Elgin residence when four people entered and, with Palomar’s help, forced her into a vehicle and drove her to a Raymond Drive apartment. Once they reached the apartment, according to prosecutors, Palomar tortured the woman by burning her with a cigarette and beating her severely enough to cause bleeding on her brain before stealing her cell phone and cash, court records show.
Palomar’s mother bonded him out of jail in that case on June 1. The new drug allegations are listed as occurring on June 23 while Palomar was free on bond. He briefly was back behind bars later in the summer after his August arrest in Carpentersville on a burglary charge that accused him stealing a pair of sunglasses from a car parked in a residential driveway, court documents state. Prosecutors cited that arrest, as well as several missed check-ins with court services officials, to ask Judge Linda Abrahamson to increase Palomar’s bail earlier this month.
Abrahamson agreed to that move, but backtracked a week later when she lowered his bail amount and placed him on electronic-home monitoring at the request of Palomar’s attorney. That decision had allowed Palomar to live with his aunt in Elgin until the drug arrest last week. Prosecutors filed another pre-trial release violation notice on Sept. 22 based on the drug case, records show.
Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.