Chainsaw-wielding man who attacked St. Charles senior home wasn't locked up despite criminal history
ST. CHARLES, Ill. (WLS) -- The ABC7 I-Team has learned new details on Monday in the case of a man who police say used a chainsaw to attack an assisted living facility in west suburban St. Charles on Sunday morning.
If Daniel H. Escalera had stopped cutting notches in the big trees, it might have ended differently at the River Glen of St. Charles senior assisted living.
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Instead, police said, 41-year-old Escalera walked in the front door. Shirtless and wielding a powered-up chainsaw, the Stockwell, Indiana man was threatening the residents there, many of them in memory care.
Even when police hit him with a Taser, Escalera kept threatening residents with the chainsaw until police shot him dead.
"It scares us. But I'm sure it's a one-time incident, and we hope and pray that that's the situation, because we love the community. St. Charles, downtown St. Charles is wonderful," said neighbor Tom Lapis.
Paul Ekstrom's 100-year-old mother was having breakfast in the assisted living facility's dining room, right next to the lobby that Escalera entered, when the attack happened Sunday morning.
"Every time I recount this story, it just doesn't seem real," Ekstrom said. "If it wasn't for the police, I mean, thank God for the police, they would've been sitting ducks."
Escalera's lengthy record, obtained Monday night by the I-Team, offers some clues as to why he wandered up there with a blazing chainsaw.
"That would be my question. Why was he even in the vicinity?" Ekstrom said.
The record spans almost 25 years and includes numerous arrests for driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol; becoming an habitual DUI traffic violator and resisting law enforcement; cocaine and methamphetamine possession; public intoxication and endangerment; and domestic battery, as reported by a local Indiana paper, when he was accused of stabbing his then-wife and SWAT had to be called in.
As for why he showed up at the senior living facility on Sunday with a chainsaw and started attacking trees and elderly residents? It was his MO: Back in September 2022 in rural Indiana, Escalera tangled in a spontaneous road rage incident, beating a motorcyclist with his own helmet.
Escalera was convicted and jailed. And it appears he was supposed to be in jail Sunday for violating probation in one of the many other cases against him.
The I-Team is still trying to determine why he wasn't locked up.
But that decision allowed him to be on the loose with a chainsaw, threatening residents, and dead on the ground in a fatal confrontation with police.
The I-Team tried contacting several prosecutors' offices in Indiana to ask why Escalera wasn't held in custody for offenses that were clear violations of his probation but has not heard back.
Illinois State Police are now investigating the fatal officer-involved shooting, as required by state law whenever there is an officer-involved death.
