Speeding motorcyclist busted by YouTube video and ankle monitor
A speeding motorcyclist who initially evaded police during a chase in the Chicago suburbs put on new twist on a daredevil practice of recording such incidents on camera.
In addition to posting a video on YouTube, motorcyclist Hamza Ali Ben Ali was wearing a GPS ankle monitor during the 2012 incident, the Chicago Tribune reported.
That enabled prosecutors not only to show the YouTube video along with video shot by Westmont police, but sync the defendant’s location to the speeding motorcycle, said assistant DuPage County state’s attorney Alex Sendlak. The GPS monitor also reported Ali’s speed of 115 mph.
The 31-year-old was convicted last month of eluding police, aggravated fleeing and driving with a suspended license and the government will ask that he get prison time when he is sentenced on Friday.
Having seen a camera mounted on Ali’s Honda CBR 1000 bike, which lacked a license plate, police were on the lookout for the YouTube video following the chase. It went up about two weeks after the Oct. 21, 2012 incident, the newspaper reports.
Ali is an Algerian citizen and has a prior record of possession of a stolen motor vehicle and aggravated battery of a police officer in Chicago’s Cook County, the Tribune reports. He faces immigration proceedings and another motorcycle-chase case in suburban Will County, in which he allegedly “lifted his helmet, waved goodbye and accelerated away,” as a filing in the DuPage case puts it.
The article doesn’t include any comment from the defendant or his legal counsel. The attorney argued at trial that the government couldn’t prove his client was operating the motorcycle at the time of the crime.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “See the video: Accused biker acquitted in case over 186-mph wild ride but loses motorcycle”
