Ethiopian Review

WHEATON, Ill. (STNG) — Two men from Alabama are scheduled to appear next month in DuPage County Circuit Court, following a star-crossed family reunion that ended with a brawl outside a Naperville hotel and the seizure of three firearms.

Ten Naperville police officers, including a K-9 unit, were sent to quell the disturbance that terrified several guests of the Best Western Naperville Inn, at 1617 Naperville-Wheaton Road on the city’s northeast side. No shots were fired, and no one was seriously injured in the incident.

Steven T. Welch, 19, of Birmingham, Ala., is charged with attempted unlawful use of weapons, a misdemeanor, according to court records. A relative, Carlos A. Welch, 28, of Pleasant Grove, Ala., faces trial on two charges of domestic battery, court records indicated.

Naperville police Cmdr. Mike Anders said police were called to the hotel about 2:30 a.m. July 5, following a 911 telephone call about a woman being beaten in the parking lot.

A 21-year-old woman from south suburban Riverdale was kicked in the head in the hotel parking lot, allegedly by Carlos Welch, who is her cousin, Anders said.

A 911 call to police reported “a large group of people were gathering in the parking lot, with a woman being slapped,” Anders said.

The caller added “one of the subjects in the lot had a handgun,” Anders said. Police subsequently found Steven Welch in possession of a revolver and two semiautomatic handguns, he said.

A woman who was spending the night in the hotel with her husband and children witnessed what she called “a loud altercation” outside one of the family’s two, second-floor rooms. “Within seconds, (an) officer very decisively drew his gun, a sight I’d never personally seen before,” the woman wrote in an e-mailing to The Naperville Sun.

“We determined to collect our children from their room across the hall … and place them on the floor in our room away from the window and the doors,” the woman wrote. She reported seeing a semiautomatic machinegun seized by police, although Anders said no such weapon was confiscated.

“Police activity continued for several hours as we watched, unable to sleep,” the woman wrote. “The thought that those weapons and their owner were housed beneath our rooms for an unknown period of time was extremely frightening for us and for our kids.”

Steven Welch is scheduled to appear Aug. 4 in court, and Carlos Welch on Aug. 5.

- wbbm780.com