Police search downtown hotel for fugitive

Chicago police, including a SWAT team, searched a downtown hotel late Friday night for a fugitive wanted on a LaSalle County warrant.

Police and staff at the Congress Hotel on South Michigan Avenue said the man had been positively identified as 28-year-old Justin Ray Sparlin of Ottawa, who is wanted for predatory criminal sexual assault of a child.

Police spokeswoman Monique Bond said early Saturday that officers originally thought Sparlin was barricaded in a room on the hotel's 12th floor, but a search of the room and several floors of the hotel failed to find him.

Bond said Sparlin remained at large early Saturday.