By Rummana Hussain
Chicago Sun-Times
COOK COUNTY, Ill. — A Cook County Jail guard and a Plainfield woman allegedly helped smuggle marijuana into the jail cell of the man accused of severely beating a petite Irish exchange student with a baseball bat last year.
Correctional Officer Jerome Prusa, 50, and Heriberto Viramontes’ girlfriend Kira Lundgren, 22, were arrested June 11 — just minutes after the cannabis was taken into the facility, the sheriff’s office said.
Viramontes, 32, was charged with bringing contraband into a penal institution after the investigation, which became part of a larger probe into how prohibited objects ended up in inmates’ cells.
When Lundgren came to see Viramontes last month, she brought a small amount of marijuana, hidden in her shoe, and taped it under the table of the visiting room, the sheriff’s office said.
Prusa was overseeing the room, and coincidentally, an undercover sting operation was under way. A female officer posing as a visitor walked into the area in a prearranged attempt to smuggle marijuana and cigarettes into the jail under Prusa’s watch, said Steve Patterson, a sheriff’s spokesman.
Lundgren, who didn’t know the woman was an undercover officer, asked her if she could make sure the pot was delivered to Viramontes, Patterson said. Prusa then allegedly unlocked the doors, letting the undercover officer into a secured part of the jail to leave the marijuana.
The pot was later found in Viramontes’ cell, the sheriff’s office said.
Investigators had not anticipated the alleged delivery to Viramontes when they set up the sting, Patterson said. Prusa allegedly also allowed the undercover officer to leave the marijuana and cigarettes she had originally brought.
Prusa, of Westchester, had two knives hidden in his uniform when he was arrested, the sheriff’s office said.
Prusa, a correctional officer since 2005, was ordered held in lieu of $40,000 bail on charges of official misconduct, possession of a weapon in a penal institution, bringing a weapon into a penal institution and bringing contraband into a penal institution.
He has been suspended, and he has resigned from his duties as an auxiliary officer with the La Grange Park Police Department.
Viramontes was ordered held without bail on attempted murder, aggravated battery and armed robbery charges in the Bucktown attack on Natasha McShane and Stacy Jurich on April 23, 2010.
Viramontes’ former girlfriend Marcy Cruz, 26, also was charged in the beating.
Jurich, of Chicago, also was hurt in the attack, but McShane was most severely injured, suffering a cracked skull. Doctors had to remove a portion of McShane’s skull because of brain swelling.
McShane has struggled with infections, seizure and brain shunts since her parents took her back home to Northern Ireland, her father told the Chicago Sun-Times in April.
McShane can barely move, and the one word she can say with regularity is “sinn,” the Gaelic word for “we” or “us,” her father said.
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