Kidnapping charges upheld in Algonquin man's trial

A McHenry County judge upheld the most severe kidnapping charges Wednesday against an Algonquin man accused of abducting his ex-girlfriend in 2006, exposing him to as much as 30 years in prison if convicted.

Rejecting defense arguments labeling the charges "a legal impossibility," Judge Sharon Prather ruled that Inhak "Tommy" Cho must stand trial on two aggravated kidnapping allegations.

Cho, 46, faces those accusations, along with two counts of kidnapping and an unlawful restraint charge stemming from claims he abducted his former girlfriend from a Carpentersville residence in April 2006.

Police said Cho held the woman against her will at the Algonquin home they once shared until police, tipped off by the woman's friend that something was amiss, arrived at the home and rescued her.

In court documents asking Prather to dismiss the charges, Cho's defense said prosecutors upgraded the case to one of aggravated kidnapping on the basis that it involved carjacking. Cho, according to the allegations, abducted his former girlfriend using her minivan.

However, the defense argued, Cho co-owned the vehicle and it legally is not possible to carjack one's own vehicle.

But Prather sided with county prosecutors who argued that ownership of the minivan would be a factual decision for a jury to decide, not a matter to determine in a pre-trial hearing.

Cho already is serving a six-year sentence on a felony domestic battery charge involving his girlfriend of 8½ years. He also is awaiting trial on an escape charge alleging he tried to bust out of the McHenry County jail in January.

Jail officers foiled that escape bid when they discovered Cho was using a chisel fashioned out of a mop to dig a hole a cell wall. He tried to cover the hole, authorities said, with toothpaste.