Police: Elgin man used woman’s apartment as a cooling center
From staff reports July 18, 2012 4:42PM
Curtis Cathey
Updated: August 20, 2012 11:54AM
ELGIN — An Elgin man reportedly made himself comfortable in a stranger’s apartment because it had air conditioning and he needed a place to cool off, police said.
A woman told police she left her apartment unlocked in the 200 block of Jefferson Avenue when she went to visit a neighboring apartment about noon Tuesday. But when she came home a half-hour later, she found a stranger sitting in her apartment, listening to music, she said.
Explaining that he apparently had entered the wrong apartment by mistake, the stranger left while the woman called 911 to report that she had surprised a burglar.
Police said they caught the man walking nearby and identified him as Curtis Cathey, 18, of the 600 block of Brook Street, Elgin.
Cathey told police he had been very uncomfortable in Tuesday’s 99-degree weather and had simply entered the first unlocked, air-conditioned apartment he could find so he could cool off. Cathey was charged with criminal trespassing.
