A Kane County judge is set to rule in December on whether police had probable cause to search the car of a Melrose Park man charged with traveling to an Aurora school to meet an 11-year-old girl.
The decision will determine whether items found inside the car can be used as evidence.
Alonso Ayala, 22, of the 10000 block of Lyndale Avenue, has pleaded not guilty to felony charges of grooming and traveling to meet a minor for the purpose of committing a sex offense in connection with his arrest in 2016 in a parking lot near Dieterich Elementary School. He’s free on $50,000 bail.
Through Facebook, a friend introduced the girl to Ayala, who was 21 at the time. She sent him a friend request on Monday, May 23, 2016, according to documents.
Excerpts from messages between the two, documented in a search warrant affidavit, show how a Facebook user police say is Ayala got the girl to send him a photo and tried to lure her to a soccer field behind Waldo Middle School.
He asked her how old she was. He asked her if she had a boyfriend, if she wanted one and if she knew how to kiss.
He also lied about his age, saying he was 17.
“Pero estoy chikita de edad,” she said back in Spanish: “But I’m too young.”
He asked her for a photo. She said her friend gave him a photo yesterday, but ultimately sent him an image of herself, mostly just her face, in which police said a reasonable adult could determine she was 13 or younger. He asked for a photo of her full body, but she refused, according to the affidavit.
He asked her to meet him on a street, about 7 p.m. But she said that was too late, and she didn’t want her family to find out, according to the affadavit. He told her to say she was leaving with a girlfriend. She suggested 3 p.m. They agreed to meet the next day on the soccer field behind Waldo Middle School.
The next afternoon — May 25, 2016 — Waldo’s then-principal Sandy Katula called an Aurora police school resource officer and said a friend of the girl told her the girl was planning on meeting a man after school. Police later learned that friend had also been communicating with Ayala through her Facebook account, according to the affidavit. Katula is now a science teacher at Simmons Middle School.
East Aurora School District 131 spokesman Tom Jackson said the case precedes both him and superintendent Mark McDonald.
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“It appears that the principal at the time did the proper thing in contacting the (police),” Jackson said in an email. “Beyond this, the case was handled by the police.”
Katula notified the Waldo Middle School police resource officer, and police worked with the student’s family to apprehend Ayala, Jackson said.
The officer went to Waldo and talked with a counselor and the girl, who told them how she — virtually — met Ayala and let them read Facebook messages between the two, according to the affidavit. The girl said she hadn’t deleted any.
After adults read the messages, the officer escorted the girl home. He talked with the girl’s mother, advising her to take away the girl’s Facebook access and stop all contact with Ayala.
While the officer was meeting with the parents, Ayala sent the girl additional messages asking if they were going to see each other, according to the documents.
Though police had said not to, the girl’s mother said she’d continued to message with Ayala, according to the affidavit. She told police she was trying to set up a meeting with Ayala, hoping to then contact police to have them respond and arrest him.
“After it was discovered the mother had continued communication and had made plans to meet at or near a school, it was determined we would reinitiate contact,” police wrote in the affidavit.
Dieterich School was suggested as a meeting place. Ayala said he’d pick her up there at 5:30 p.m, again pressuring her to agree to giving him a kiss and trying to get her to agree to get in his car, according to messages excerpted in the affidavit.
Ayala was arrested after he arrived in a lot near Dieterich Elementary. In the hatch of his car officers noted a child’s toy and backpack, still in the box with tag attached; several bottles of male libido enhancement supplements; and a plastic bag containing multiple pairs of female underwear. Police took all the items and put them into evidence, according to the affidavit.
Ayala’s lawyer in December 2016 asked the judge to suppress evidence found in the car during the arrest, arguing police didn’t have probable cause to search it. Kane County Circuit Judge John Barsanti is scheduled to rule on the motion — which does not indicate what investigators recovered during their search of the car — Dec. 20.