Mentally ill Belleville man who was ‘terrorizing’ neighborhood died in jail
Kevin O. Peals Sr. was scheduled to appear in court for a review of his mental health treatment plan before he faced a slew of allegations, including threatening to “shoot and kill” two Belleville firefighters.
Neighbors on South 31st Street reported that Peals filled his front yard with trash taken from a nearby apartment building’s dumpster. He allegedly set a pile of trash on fire near foliage between his property and the apartments while naked from the waist down on June 14, according to city and county records.
City workers cleaned his property four times, and a fire broke out on the front porch in April.
“He’s just been terrorizing the neighborhood,” Police Chief Matt Eiskant told the Belleville News-Democrat in June.
The 65-year-old man was missing the morning of his Dec. 19 court date.
It turns out Peals had died of natural causes more than two months earlier, on Oct. 11, inside the St. Clair County Jail, according to Illinois State Police and the county coroner.
Three days before Peals’ death, a county judge ordered him to undergo treatment for mental illness because a forensic psychologist found him unfit to stand trial.
St. Clair County Public Defender Cathy MacElroy was scheduled to represent Peals on Dec. 19 and was surprised when he did not appear.
“I had no idea that he had died,” MacElroy said.
MacElroy said she expects changes in the notification process when someone dies in the county jail. “My understanding is that going forward, the jail will notify me if anybody dies,” she said.
MacElroy said she reiterated to jail officials that defense lawyers should be notified when an inmate dies and believes they are in agreement with her.
A representative of the county jail could not be reached for comment about Peals’ death.
MacElroy said she had checked a roster of names of people in the jail and there was a “Kevin Peals” on the list. However, St. Clair County court records show that Kevin Peals Sr.’s son, Kevin O. Peals Jr., 41, of Belleville, has been held in the jail since early last year on weapon and drug charges and remains in custody.
Mental health review
At the time of his death, Kevin Peals Sr. was waiting to be treated by the Illinois Department of Human Services.
On Oct. 8, St. Clair County Associate Judge Sara L. Rice signed an order stating jail staff reported that Peals refused to appear in a courtroom or via Zoom and “has had aggressive outbursts while in custody.”
Rice’s order called for Peals to be remanded to the custody of the Department of Human Services for “fitness restoration services” because Dr. Daniel Cuneo, a Belleville forensic psychologist, considered Peals “unfit to stand trial.”
When the state agency’s staff went to the jail to evaluate Peals on Dec. 19, they found out he had died on Oct. 11 and then gave this information to MacElroy before Peals’ scheduled hearing.
Peals landed in the county jail after he was charged with two felony counts of threatening a public official and three misdemeanor counts of reckless conduct in June.
Charging documents allege he threatened to shoot two firefighters and that he started a fire in a pile of trash near foliage next to an apartment building with multiple residents on June 14.
Peals allegedly told two Belleville firefighters multiple times that he was going to “shoot and kill them” and “burn everything to the ground,” according to Eiskant.
Peals stayed in jail because St. Clair County Associate Judge Jeffrey Watson ruled on June 18 during a detention hearing that he was a threat to the public. Watson also acknowledged a “bona fide doubt” had been raised about whether Peals was mentally fit to stand trial and ordered that Peals be evaluated by Cuneo.
Watson noted in his detention order that Peals had recently been granted pretrial release on other charges filed in May and early June.
Illinois judges have been conducting detention hearings since September 2023 for people charged with serious offenses. If a judge finds a person dangerous to the community, the person can be remanded to the county jail until trial, under the state’s revamped criminal justice system, which eliminated cash bail as part of the Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today, or SAFE-T, Act.
Eiskant has said the police department had 41 contacts with Peals between Jan. 1, 2025, and June. This included times that an ambulance was called due to Peals’ illnesses.
Eiskant and Assistant Police Chief Mark Heffernan told the News-Democrat in June that the Peals case is an example of what’s wrong with the SAFE-T Act.
“This happens often with the SAFE-T Act that we get felony charges on individuals, and they’re released right away,” Eiskant said.
Death in the jail
Illinois State Police agents were requested by the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department to conduct a death investigation involving an inmate found unresponsive in his jail cell on Oct. 11, according to an ISP statement.
The inmate, who was identified as Peals, was declared deceased at the scene and no other information about the investigation was available to be released, state police said.
St. Clair County Coroner Calvin Dye Sr. said autopsy results showed Peals died of a form of pneumonia and gastrointestinal hemorrhage of an unknown cause.
After the St. Clair County State’s Attorney’s Office confirmed Peals’ death on Dec. 19, the office filed a motion to close the cases against Peals and Rice signed this order instead of holding the fitness review as scheduled that day.
Belleville News-Democrat reporter Teri Maddox contributed information for this article.
