PEORIA – Ronnie Common Jr. spent nearly a week in jail and lost his job partially because of two investigations in which he was never charged, including one he had no involvement with whatsoever.
His attorney in the matter blames Peoria police.
On the afternoon of May 6, Common was seated on a sidewalk, his hands cuffed behind his back, answering questions from a Peoria police officer about a hit-and-run.
He was driving a red Ford Explorer along West Circle Road when an officer pulled him over. He told the officer that he had been waiting for food at the time of the crash and that he was not involved in a collision.
The officer cleared him of involvement. However, Common was soon headed to the Peoria County Jail on domestic violence accusations from January, although he was never officially charged in the case.
The officer arrested Common, as he was on a “49” — a code for letting an officer know that there is probable cause to arrest someone, according to Peoria police spokesperson Semone Roth. The “49” had been issued on a case involving aggravated domestic battery and interfering with reporting of domestic violence.
After the arrest, his attorney was flabbergasted as to how Common wasn’t provided with a hearing in a timely fashion.
“He was released at noon on May 11,” Peoria attorney Kevin Sullivan, who represented Common, said. “When I got involved, I got a hold of the state’s attorney’s office and said, ‘Hey, what’s going on with this guy? He’s been in custody since the 6th and normally, you have to release somebody or get them into court within 48 hours of when they’re booked.’ In this case, that didn’t happen.”
Police reports and body camera footage provided to the Journal Star gave a clearer view of what happened, both in January and on that afternoon in May.
Police reports reveal domestic violence accusations
On Jan. 24, Peoria police were called to the 700 block of East Virginia Avenue in the East Bluff after receiving an alert of domestic violence. At 7:39 a.m., a Peoria police officer spoke with a woman who said there had been a problem with her boyfriend, identified as Common, according to a police report obtained by the Journal Star.
He denied the domestic violence accusations in an interview with the Journal Star.
She told the officer that at 7 a.m., Common looked through her cellphone and found communication with other men. Common asked her about those communications, which led to him becoming physically aggressive, according to the report.
The report says she told the officer that Common had slapped her and shoved her around, causing her to fall to the ground. When she fell, Common then tried to mount her and choke her using both of his hands, according to the report. The woman said that Common would only stop choking her to continue the slapping.
The woman escaped and left through the back door of their home, running down Virginia Avenue and screaming for help. A witness told the officer that he heard her screaming and invited her into his home down the street to contact police.
The woman said that she had to scream because Common had taken her phone as she tried to call 911. The witness said he hadn’t observed the conflict between Common and the woman.
Another neighbor told police he saw the woman running down the street screaming. Moments later, he saw Common run down the street after her.
While the woman told police that she didn’t need medical attention, she was crying and visibly upset when she spoke with the officer, according to the report.
The officer conducted a lethality screening, used to identify people who are at high risk of being killed by their partners, along with providing forms that could have led to an order of protection being filed, if she chose to do so. She was also provided with the contact information for an abuse crisis hotline.
She described Common to police as a 5-foot-6 inch, 170-pound man with dreadlocks down to his shoulders, along with tattoos on his arms. She told police that he worked at the Rivian plant outside Bloomington, receiving a ride from a friend because he didn’t have his own car.
Police took photos of the woman’s face and neck area, with the officer’s report saying he could observe redness on her face and some discoloration on her neck. She told the officer that there was nothing else that would be an indicator for domestic violence on her body at that time, noting that she would be staying with her parents for the time being.
Common was not present at the time and police issued a “49,” meaning the next time police encountered him, they had probable cause to take him into custody.
Sullivan said that while there wasn’t a court order or a warrant, police can use such a procedure to arrest someone if they have probable cause to believe they committed such an act. However, Sullivan said he felt that the woman had no intention of trying to press charges, which meant that the future actions of the Peoria Police Department were “excessive.”
Sullivan said Common had other arrests on his record, theorizing Peoria police may have been predisposed to treat him negatively.
Peoria County court records show that Common had two previous felony convictions, including an arrest for domestic battery in 2018. He pleaded guilty and spent 180 days in the Peoria County Jail. On another domestic battery arrest in 2025, he received probation.
The woman in the domestic violence police report did not respond to phone requests for comment from the Journal Star, despite initial contact with her.
Arrest after a Peoria traffic stop
Common next encountered police on May 6 as they investigated a hit-and-run at the intersection of North Sheridan Road and West Eleanor Place. Body camera footage obtained by the Journal Star, along with police reports, show that the inquiry into the crash began around 2:44 p.m.
Dispatch records obtained by the Journal Star show the initial complainant said that a red SUV had collided with a pedestrian, causing a knee injury to the juvenile.
A witness believed that the vehicle involved in the crash was a red Chevrolet SUV, according to the police report. Both the dispatch logs and the police reports said a vehicle was found matching the description provided, but the vehicle searched was a red Ford Explorer, driven by Common with another man in the passenger seat.
Common’s vehicle was stopped in the 1500 block of West Circle Road. He was then placed in handcuffs and seated on the curb to wait.
Attorney questions whether client should have been arrested
No weapons or illegal contraband were found in the vehicle. However, an officer found a small amount of damage on the passenger side of the SUV.
In the footage, the officer talks with Common before reading him his Miranda rights. Common tells the officer that he had been driving around town with his friend, enjoying a day off from work.
The officer says that the vehicle he was driving matched the description of the one that hit the juvenile. The officer does note that someone could have mistaken his SUV for the one that hit the child, but notes that they were just making sure that it was the vehicle in question.
Common continually denies hitting the child. He says slight damage on the vehicle was caused by other unrelated incidents and hitting a curb. Common also says he has four children and would not strike a juvenile and flee the scene.
Once the interview ends, the officer says he has to check on some things before another officer on scene brings up the “49” on Common. He is then sent into the officer’s car to wait out the remainder of the investigation.
After looking at surveillance footage, officers determine the SUV was not involved in the hit-and-run.
Then they begin to ask Common about the accusations from January.
The officer asks Common a series of questions. The police report says that Common told him he hadn’t looked through the woman’s phone, but she had looked through his. He denied putting his hands on her at any time, saying that she had been chasing him out of their home.
Common told the officer that he had not attempted to take the woman’s phone, nor did he try to prevent her from calling 911.
Common is eventually transferred to a different police vehicle, where he is taken into custody on the domestic violence issue.
Sullivan says that Peoria police should have tried to determine if the woman’s domestic violence claims had merit.
“It appeared to me that the allegations made against him earlier this year did not justify the officer issuing a ‘Code 49,’ which is a message to all police officers to arrest Ronnie Common for a domestic violence offense,” Sullivan said. “The officer should have parsed the complainant’s statements more carefully and determined that she or her statements were not credible.”
Horrors at the jail
Common spoke to the Journal Star about his experience at the Peoria County Jail.
He says he was told each day he was at the jail that he had a court date. However, he hadn’t made an appearance in court at the time Sullivan contacted the State’s Attorney’s Office on May 11. He was also moved multiple times from a holding cell into the general population of the jail.
Common said he saw someone try to hang themselves at the jail on Mother’s Day, all while he and others in holding waited for something to happen in their cases.
“It was a kid who was on lock back, so he was in his jail cell 23 hours a day,” Common said. “When the COs came to check on him, he was in there pretty much hanging from his bed while we were all sitting there, playing cards, trying to get phone calls and stuff like that.”
Common called the hanging situation “traumatic.”
“To see it in real time and see him have to be brought back to life, it was crazy to see that,” Common said. “I felt like I didn’t have to.”
When reached by the Journal Star, Peoria County Sheriff Chris Watkins declined to comment.
Sullivan was contacted to work on the case by one of Common’s family members. He learned that it had been five full days since Common had been sent to the jail to wait for a hearing that never came.
Sullivan doesn’t know if it was a problem on the jail side or with the Peoria County State’s Attorney’s Office, which decided not to charge Common in the domestic violence case. Sullivan said it is possible that Common may have slipped through the cracks without malice from anyone involved.
“May 6 was a Wednesday,” Sullivan said. “Normally, he would have been in front of a judge by May 8 – that would have been the 48-hour mark – or the state’s attorney would have agreed to release him with a future court date. If he was in front of a judge, that’s when they could have sought detention under the SAFE-T Act. None of those things happened.”
Decisions on when detainees appear in court are not made by the jail.
Moving forward
Common was not released from custody until the afternoon of May 11. But his return to normal life and his job at Rivian proved to be difficult.
“It was kind of embarrassing,” Common said. “Everyone was looking at me crazy. For two or three days, it just felt off and it was kind of hard to get into the swing of work. Then, out of nowhere at the end of my shift, I was fired and they told me the reasons.”
Common was being fired due to the work he missed as a result of his ordeal at the jail, even though Sullivan provided him with a letter to give to his employer. The letter lays out the situation and blames it on a “rogue” officer who targeted him for various unknown reasons.
“One of the things I said was trying to get the employer’s attention because he had a really good job at Rivian and I wanted to make sure it was not Ronnie’s fault,” Sullivan said. “It looked like it was Ronnie’s fault that he wasn’t at work. Ronnie was going to relocate to McLean County to be closer to work and incurred the arbitrary and excessive conduct of the Peoria Police Department.”
Sullivan’s letter says that Common’s constitutional rights had been violated because he hadn’t been released or provided with a hearing within 48 hours. The letter says that Common had languished at the jail before his May 11 release.
Aside from providing the Journal Star with body camera footage and police reports, the Police Department has not responded to an email request for comment. The Peoria County State’s Attorney’s Office has also not responded to email requests for comment as to why Common was never officially charged with domestic violence.
Common is now trying to rebuild his life and hoping that it all works out in the end.
“I was in a routine of going to work every day, so it’s kind of stressful,” Common said. “I don’t really want to tell anybody that I lost my job, so I’m just keeping to myself and just trying to find a new job.”
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: He spent six days in jail without being charged. His attorney blames Peoria police
Reporting by Zach Roth, Peoria Journal Star / Journal Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Zach Roth, Peoria Journal Star | USA TODAY Network
