BUCKTOWN — A man taken into custody in connection with a case in which someone was captured on a surveillance camera standing over a sleeping Bucktown couple has been released, authorities said Friday.
On Thursday, Officer Kevin Quaid, a Chicago Police Department spokesman, said that a suspect had been arrested and charges were pending in the case. The man's name was not released.
But on Friday, police spokeswoman Officer Laura Almazega said that the man had been "released at some point overnight without charges."
Almazega did not have any further information on why the man was released.
Early Monday, while Bucktown resident Jack Mackercher and his girlfriend slept on a couch in the lower level of their Bucktown duplex, a stranger stood over and watched them for about 15 minutes, according to surveillance video of the incident.
A purse that Mackercher's girlfriend left on their bed was stolen sometime during the night.
"[Police] are gathering more evidence. If it is him, it will make people in the neighborhood feel better," Mackercher said after the man was taken into custody.
Mackercher had learned that at least five of his neighbors near Armitage Avenue and Leavitt Street reported seeing a man wander from home to home that night.
Multiple photos and videos of a bearded man, cloaked in a white hoodie, showed up on a neighborhood Facebook group page the next day.
Mackercher said he spent $200 to buy the camera, and pays $10 a month to access footage from a cloud service.
"The bigger part of it is everyone having a camera. A lot of people had cameras in the alleys, and everyone started pulling pictures of where this guy is riding around, and within a day, there were 50 or 60 photos of him," Mackercher said.
The way the news has spread through various social media and news outlets surprised him, he said.
"My girlfriend and I were at Antique Taco last night, and a couple sitting next to us were talking about it," Mackercher said.
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