BRAIDWOOD, IL — Last week's arrest of 23-year-old Braidwood citizen Gabriel Alvarez, marking his fourth time in the Will County Jail since 2021, has resulted in an indefinite detention under the Illinois SAFE-T-Act. Alvarez is charged with possessing a stolen vehicle, theft, two counts of criminal damage to government supported property and resisting a peace officer.
Will County Judge Antoinette Granholm ordered Alvarez to stay in the Will County Jail, just as the Will County State's Attorney's Office had sought.
According to the prosecution, a woman in Braidwood notified her police department that her Nissan Sentra sedan was stolen from her driveway on West Anndon Street after she parked the car there on July 23. The next day, it was gone and there were no surveillance videos of the theft. However, Braidwood police used the license plate information to learn that the car traveled to the Braidwood Gas-N-Wash at 2:58 a.m.
Additionally, photos of Alvarez at the gas station were obtained by the police and by the afternoon of July 24, the stolen car from Braidwood was going south from Joliet along I-55. Grundy County sheriff's deputies tried to stop Alvarez "and he was boxed in by Deputy Black and Deputy Lieberman. The defendant struck both vehicles with the Sentra in an attempt to elude the deputies causing damage in excess of $500 to each and all three vehicles," prosecutors revealed.
From there, Alvarez ran from his stolen car and hit in the woods, the court files show. Several police officers converged upon the area and a drone helped the police learn that Alvarez crossed over I-55 by running to the east side of the interstate. Eventually, the police detained Alvarez's father, after he was seen honking his horn and looking for his son.
Shortly before Alvarez was captured near a frontage road on the east side of I-55, Alvarez's father and Alvarez's girlfriend both suggested to Alvarez that he stop running. Meanwhile, Grundy County Deputy Black injured his leg while chasing Alvarez.
Prosecutors reminded the judge that Alvarez was already out on parole for possessing a weapon as a convicted last year, in Will County, an August 2024 sentence that resulted in a three-year term at the Illinois Department of Corrections. In 2022, Alvarez also had a conviction for possessing a weapon without a FOID and Alvarez failed to show up for two of his 2021 court hearings.
Not only that, Alvarez violated and escaped from his electronic monitoring for the 2022 case and he failed to come to court twice in 2021 for an aggravated unlawful use of a weapon crime that ultimately led to a two-year sentence at the DOC.
"The defendant's pretrial release poses a real and present threat to the safety of any person or persons in the community and the defendant poses a serious risk not to appear in court as required," prosecutors declared.