Bizarre, Criminal law

Illinois Homeowner Kills One Burglar and Tackles Another In Latest Pandemic Crime
Mugshot for Bradley Finnan, 39, of Chatanooga, Tenn.

I am in Chicago to assist with my 92-year-old mother who is in failing health. Much of the local news is about an outrageous crime where two armed robbers wore medical masks and gloves to break into a home. With people suffering in this crisis, these two individuals saw a criminal opportunity rather than human empathy. The problem is that they picked the wrong house. Not only was the crime captured on Ring, but the homeowner in Arlington Heights fatally shot Larry Brodacz, 58, and chased down, Bradley Finnan, 39.

The homeowner tackled Finnan who was able to run away but was later captured by police. The doorbell video captured the two men in their criminal act. As reported by WGN-TV, the police reported that “Fearing for his life and the lives of his wife and children, the homeowner discharged a round from the family handgun, striking Mr. Brodacz in the abdomen.”

Finnan met Brodacz at a car dealership job and reportedly told police that Brodacz told him that he once saw $200,000 in boxes in the home, but that was 20 years ago.

Finnan has been charged with felony murder due to the death of his co-felon. Such charges have been long criticized by defense counsel but are now routinely brought against those who participated in a crime leading to the death of a fellow criminal.

This crime is not unique as we have been discussing during the pandemic, including the spike in burglaries in New York and the recent horrific murders in Michigan. As I said before, crisis rarely changes people. It merely magnifies what is already in a person. Good people can become incredible heroes while bad people can become truly demonic. This seems a case of the latter.

111 thoughts on “Illinois Homeowner Kills One Burglar and Tackles Another In Latest Pandemic Crime”

  2. Tch, tch. The great scholar Paul C Schulte failed to recognize that the quotation I gave is from a remarkable lady. One who gave character to the subsequent 4 centuries.

    But I hadn’t known that perhaps she read Ovid. I don’t know when she would have had time for it.

    1. David Benson is the God Emperor of Making Stuff Up and owes me forty-four citations (one from the OED, one from the town ordinances and two from the Old Testament), an equation and the source of a quotation, after seventy-one weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. – if your “remarkable lady” is from 4 centuries ago, then of course she read Ovid. It was on the syllabus.

  3. David Benson is the God Emperor of Making Stuff Up and owes me forty-four citations (one from the OED, one from the town ordinances and two from the Old Testament), an equation and the source of a quotation, after seventy-one weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. – again you have failed to cite your source.

  4. Paul C Schulte failed to recognize the source of the quotation!

    But of course Ovid did not write in modern American English.

    Tch, tch.

    1. David Benson is the God Emperor of Making Stuff Up and owes me forty-four citations (one from the OED, one from the town ordinances and two from the Old Testament), an equation and the source of a quotation, after seventy-one weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. – you don’t understand the concept of the comma.

    1. David Benson is the God Emperor of Making Stuff Up and owes me forty-four citations (one from the OED, one from the town ordinances and two from the Old Testament), an equation and the source of a quotation, after seventy-one weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. You twit, it is “the end crowns the work.” Ovid

  6. Only in the American welfare state:

    In the heavily congested food bank drive-thru at the Forum, at least one donee was driving a Lexus.

    1. Maybe the person was making a monetary contribution or leaving food. Who knows. Don’t jump to conclusions.

      1. I understand that I have certain, shall we say, deficiencies and I very much appreciate your concern and your admonition but the Lexus was distinctly in the food pick-up line with many multiple other nice, late model cars.

        I didn’t suggest that the suppliant should not be given the food, I meant it is possible that only in the American welfare state could an anomaly of such colossal proportions evolve.

    1. David Benson is the God Emperor of Making Stuff Up and owes me forty-three citations (one from the OED, one from the town ordinances and two from the Old Testament), an equation and the source of a quotation, after seventy weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. again you Make Stuff Up. How unacademic of you. Shame, shame, shame.

      1. Why does he use those idiotic cartoons for every comment?
        Strange as they come

  8. Jonathan,

    I’ll email you, but you really need get your guest bloggers to add their names to their tweets, so that people don’t think that you’re the author. You need to fix this — and if you’re busy, then Darren Smith should take care of the problem for you by 1) adding his name to the tweets that highlight his postings and 2) by highlighting/bolding his name at the beginning of his postings on your blog. This is a something that could have been addressed a long time ago. Any responsible “weekend blogger” would take care of it.

    Your pal (/sarc) Jennifer Rubin tweeted the following:

    “Jennifer Rubin
    @JRubinBlogger
    ·
    1h
    Replying to
    @JonathanTurley

    Sadly, you’ve become crackpotish. This is an absurd argument.”

    (Maybe she’ll write another Washington Post op-ed about you.)

      1. You need to get a life.
        Geez Louise, what in the heck do you do with yourself when not posting such trivial matters?

          1. Porn is profitable and COVID will grow your readership but your brain not so much

    2. Anonymous, that’s a fascinating development. Our weekend contributor has a point of view one associates with the anti-government crowd; a group that tends to suffer from PR-related issues.

      1. One of my favorites:

        https://twitter.com/GloverLawFL/status/1248955639705018369

        “Tony Glover
        @GloverLawFL

        Replying to
        @GloverLawFL
        and
        @JonathanTurley

        The disclaimer at the bottom of the post is cute, but you did tweet this out under your individual handle. You own it.”

        Turley could easlity fix this problem but he prefers to whine about it. He also pretends that he has more than one “weekend blogger.” It’s been eons since we’ve heard from any of the others… Darren Smith is the only one who posts on a fairly regular basis.

        Have your “bloggers” post their names in their tweets. If you don’t take this very simple step — an easy “fix” if you will — then “you own it…because it’s you who appears to be tweeting it. As one of your regular commenters likes to say, “This isn’t that difficult.”

  9. JT:
    Very sorry to hear about mama’s health. Keep her comfortable and rested. She’ll be cooking for you before you know it.

    1. David Benson is the God Emperor of Making Stuff Up and owes me forty-three citations (one from the OED, one from the town ordinances and two from the Old Testament), an equation and the source of a quotation, after seventy weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. – you are in no position to accuse people of making things up.

  13. All in broad daylight, while the guy across the street is mowing his lawn.

    Any details on the homeowner?

  14. MPK. Good catch. Seth rarely tries to makes a point without including a few gratuitous insults and jabs. He doesn’t seem like a very nice person here. Maybe he is better in person because some of his insults would earn a punch in the teeth in some communities.

    1. Young, you’ve been unmasked. You’re Crazy Idiot and I should gave guessed that sooner.

  15. “Finnan met Brodacz at a car dealership job and reportedly told police that Brodacz told him that he once saw $200,000 in boxes in the home, but that was 20 years ago.”

    There’s almost certainly more to this story than meets the eye. Did Finnan know the homeowner? How was it that Finnan knew that there was ‘$200,000 in boxes…20 years ago’?

    Maybe we’ll get the full story, at some point.

  16. According to Worldometer, the number of new cases of COVID-19 has stopped rising in the USA, day by day.

    🚑

      1. Good idea. If a poisonous slug like Avenatti can get out there is no reason to keep a political prisoner like Assange in prison.

  18. Professor Turley, sorry to hear your mother is in poor health. I hope she gets well soon. You and your family are in my prayers.

  20. Meanwhile, in real news:

    The Post Office is struggling because Trump threatened to veto the virus aid bill if it was given funds to help get through the crisis.

    Today’s WaPo:

    “The Postal Service’s decades-long financial troubles have worsened dramatically as the volume of the kind of mail that pays the agency’s bills ― first-class and marketing mail ― withers during the pandemic. The USPS needs an infusion of money, and President Trump has blocked potential emergency funding for the agency that employs around 600,000 workers, repeating instead the false claim that higher rates for Internet shipping companies Amazon, FedEx and UPS would right the service’s budget.

    Trump threatened to veto the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or Cares Act, if the legislation contained any money directed to bail out the postal agency, according to a senior Trump administration official and a congressional official who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity.

    While the Trump Administration and Mnuchin pushed through private-sector bailouts in the Cares Act — $350 billion to the Small Business Administration loan program, $29 billion to passenger airlines and air cargo carriers, and economic incentives for the construction, energy and life sciences industries, among others — Mnuchin has signaled any postal relief funds in a “Phase IV” stimulus package under negotiation would amount to a poison pill…..”

    1. Also:

      Today’s WaPO:

      “Another 100 crew members on board the USS Theodore Roosevelt have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, the Navy announced Saturday, bringing the total number of cases tied to the aircraft carrier to 550.

      The Navy says it has moved 3,696 sailors and officers ashore, or about 92 percent of those on board. There are 3,673 negative results so far….”

      1. And, the Feds, after failing to deliver on tests as promised and actually pulling out of testing:

        Yesterday’s WaPo:

        “A national plan to fight the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and return Americans to jobs and classrooms is emerging — but not from the White House.

        Instead, a collection of governors, former government officials, disease specialists and nonprofits are pursuing a strategy that relies on the three pillars of disease control: Ramp up testing to identify people who are infected. Find everyone they interact with by deploying contact tracing on a scale America has never attempted before. And focus restrictions more narrowly on the infected and their contacts so the rest of society doesn’t have to stay in permanent lockdown.

        But there is no evidence yet the White House will pursue such a strategy…..

        Administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations, say the White House has made a deliberate political calculation that it will better serve Trump’s interest to put the onus on governors — rather than the federal government — to figure out how to move ahead.

        “It’s mind-boggling, actually, the degree of disorganization,” said Tom Frieden, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director. The federal government has already squandered February and March, he noted, committing “epic failures” on testing kits, ventilator supply, protective equipment for health workers and contradictory public health communication. The next failure is already on its way, Frieden said, because “we’re not doing the things we need to be doing in April.”

        In recent days, dozens of leading voices have coalesced around the test-trace-quarantine framework, including former FDA commissioners for the Trump and George W. Bush administrations, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and top experts at Johns Hopkins, Columbia and Harvard universities.

        On Wednesday, former president Barack Obama weighed in, tweeting, “Social distancing bends the curve and relieves some pressure … But in order to shift off current policies, the key will be a robust system of testing and monitoring — something we have yet to put in place nationwide.”

        And Friday, Apple and Google unveiled a joint effort on new tools that would use smartphones to aid in contact tracing.

        What remains unclear is whether this emerging plan can succeed without the backing of the federal government. Some states such as Massachusetts and Utah are already trying to implement parts of it. In the absence of federal leadership — as happened last month with stay-at-home orders — other states may watch and follow suit. But without substantial federal funding, states’ efforts will only go so far.

        In South Korea, Taiwan, China and Singapore, variations on this basic strategy were implemented by their national governments, allowing them to keep the virus in check even as they reopened parts of their economy and society.

        In America, testing — while still woefully behind — is ramping up. And households across the country have learned over the past month how to quarantine. But when it comes to the second pillar of the plan — the labor-intensive work of contact tracing — local health departments lack the necessary staff, money and training.

        Experts and leaders in some states say remedying that weakness should be a priority and health departments should be rapidly shored up so that they are ready to act in coming weeks as infections nationwide begin to decrease. In a report released Friday, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials — which represents state health departments — estimate 100,000 additional contact tracers are needed and call for $3.6 billion in emergency funding from Congress.

        The CDC is researching how to increase contact tracing capacity, its director, Robert Redfield, said Friday in an NPR interview.

        “We can’t afford to have multiple community outbreaks that can spiral up into sustained community transmission,” he said in the interview.

        “We have over 600 people in the field right now from CDC in all the states trying to help with this response, but we are going to have to substantially amplify that,” he said.

        But those efforts have not been reviewed by the White House, and the disease agency’s role has been diminished in the administration’s pandemic response. “We’re definitely in the middle of all of that. It’s premature for me to roll it out,” Redfield said.

        Technology, like the Apple-Google partnership, that could aid that effort is also being developed, but it comes with civil liberty concerns that need to be resolved.

        Unless states can aggressively trace and isolate the virus, experts say, there will be new outbreaks and another round of disruptive stay-at-home orders.

        “All people are talking about right now is hospital beds, ventilators, testing, testing, testing. Yes, those are important, but they are all reactive. You are dealing with the symptoms and not the virus itself,” said Tolbert Nyenswah, who led one of the most successful contact tracing efforts in Africa during the 2014 to 2016 Ebola epidemic. “You will never beat a virus like this one unless you get ahead of it. America must not just flatten the curve but get ahead of the curve.””

    2. My money is on Kushner or the Trump family starting up a company to deliver mail. We will have to pay Kushner or the Trump family to deliver our vote if we get a chance to vote by mail. The saying of getting lost in the mail, would have a whole new meaning.

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