Stupid or Not, She's Still Guilty: Court Supervision

By Joseph Hosey

Even after a Granite City woman's lawyer argued that his "dumb" client "stupidly" got mixed up with an ex-con, a Cook County judge still found her guilty of taking part in an Orland Park carjacking.

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April Schmidt, 24, was taken from the Bridgeview courthouse to the county jail following her trial this week. Schmidt testified during the trial that she had grown afraid of the ex-con she corresponded with while he was in prison and then traveled north to meet after his release.

“I thought he was going to hurt me or kill me,” Schmidt said of 25-year-old Jonathan Sarolas, who is back in prison and pulling a 12-year sentence for the same carjacking.

Here's what else happened in court this week:

• A jury took about six hours to find 23-year-old Jesus Zambrano of Joliet guilty of gunning down the boyfriend of his buddy's love interest.
• Former Will County Board Member Kathleen Konicki filed court papers saying a boyfriend "took carefully staged pictures designed to embarass" her, and then passed them off to a pal who distributed them "to a number of other people."
• The daughter of Will County Board Republican Chairman Jim Moustis is a wanted on charges of deceptive practice and theft of services for allegedly passing bad checks to a Monee dog boarding service.
• A Cook County judge set a September date for a Tinely Park woman charged with running over her live-in lover to return to the Bridgeview courthouse. Christine Meyers, 24, was arrested in December.
• Prosecutors turned over a compact disc recording of a voicemail during a hearing for 46-year-old Ralph Grajek, an Orland Park man charged with breaking down the door of a former girlfriend's home and brutally attacking her.
• Former Orland firefighter Dean Milenkovic now must wait until October for his lawyer and a prosecutor to try to hammer out a deal in his sex cases.
• The lawyer for Oak Lawn Doctor Rajat Prakash was trying to get the medical records of one of the women he is charged with sexually abusing introduced as evidence.
• Attorneys and a Cook County judge got together for a closed door meeting on the deadly driving under the influence case against Sam Cafi, 29, but couldn't reach common ground.
• A man filed a lawsuit against a Naperville cable company claiming he was injured when he drove his motorcycle over industrial ladders that came loose from one of its trucks.