A Chicago man charged in 2024 with threatening to “blow up” a building used by Pioneer Center for Human Services in McHenry made a first court appearance Monday.
Gregory Hubbs, 38, is charged with disorderly conduct in the form of a false bomb threat or deadly substance threat, a Class 3 felony, according to the criminal complaint filed in McHenry County court.
In court Monday, Assistant State’s Attorney Garrett Miller argued for Hubbs’s pretrial detention in county jail. However, Judge Christopher Harmon ruled the alleged offense was not a detainable offense under the SAFE-T Act and noted that Hubbs has been free since charges were filed in 2024.
Hubbs, who has no other criminal history, was released with conditions including he not leave the state.
“The allegations are very serious,” Hanson said, noting Hubbs was charged in June 2024 and the charges were presented to a grand jury 246 days later. “The state did not prove he is dangerous.”
The judge, who listened to the prosecutor’s argument to detain and read case law, said the alleged offense does not rise to the level of a “forceable felony” which could have made it detainable under the statutes.
Miller had argued that it was evident Hubbs made the threat and that he had admitted it to investigators.
“It could not be a more straightforward case,” Miller said, adding Hubbs “submitted a false bomb threat for the purposes of harassing the Pioneer Center and it had the intended effect.”
The alleged threat prompted “a massive law-enforcement response” and it was “highly disruptive to the organization,” Miller said. Hubbs “literally threatened great bodily harm.”
“Telling someone you are going to blow a building up couldn’t be more direct,” Miller said, adding that there is no way of knowing in the moment if someone intends to follow through on such a threat. There is no way to know if this is a situation of “crying wolf,” he said, adding such behavior poses “an immediate threat to the community.”
Assistant Public Defender Kim Messer said the investigation in 2024 led police to Hubbs, who was in a nursing home, which is where he was at the time he allegedly made the threat.
Investigators confiscated Hubbs’s computer and interviewed him, and he admitted to making the threats, the assistant public defender said. Hubbs was investigated for three years and the state did not file any charges on other “alleged threats,” Messer said.
“The state took no additional action,” Messer said. “He couldn’t have been that dangerous. They didn’t arrest him.”
The alleged threat read, “‘I am going to blow your building up on Monday morning,’” Messer said.
The defense attorney also said, the charge is not “automatically detainable,” also contending that all the state state has is “more commentary than evidence that he was going to actually going to do this.”
On or about the afternoon of June 15, 2024, Hubbs “knowingly and unlawfully transmitted a threat to the McHenry Pioneer Center, a false alarm that [two days later] he would blow up a Pioneer Center building, where its explosion ... would endanger human life, knowing at the time of such transmission that there were no reasonable grounds to believe that such a bomb was concealed at a Pioneer Center facility,” according to the complaint.
The Pioneer Center is a private, nonprofit organization providing programs for individuals with developmental disabilities, behavioral health challenges and homeless shelter needs throughout McHenry County, according to the agency’s website. The organization has been providing services for more than 65 years.