Wonder Lake man guilty of attack with frying pan, sex offender registry violation

A Wonder Lake man has pleaded guilty to attacking another man after learning his home was in foreclosure, though in a letter he wrote he does not remember what happened because he “blacked out.”

Ruben Meneses Jr., 44, pleaded guilty earlier this month to aggravated battery, a Class 3 felony, and was sentenced to 3½ years in prison, according to the judgment order filed in McHenry County court. In a separate case from 2023, he pleaded guilty to violating the sex offender registry laws. A third case of aggravated battery was dismissed, court documents show.

Meneses is required to serve half his sentence. After he will be on six months of mandatory supervised release. He will get credit toward his prison term of 255 days in the county jail, plus an additional 22 days of credit, half a day credit for each day spent working, volunteering or participating in self-help programs. While in jail Meneses participated in parenting classes, the judgment order said.

In exchange for his plea, additional counts of aggravated battery and aggravated battery of a person older than 60 were dismissed, records show.

According to the complaint, on or about Jan. 10, Meneses hit a man older than 60 years with a frying pan three times, causing cuts and bruises and “choked him out.” Authorities also alleged he lifted the man off the ground and “and slammed [him] down on a wooden side table that held a vase of flowers, shattering the table and the vase of flowers, and resulting in multiple bruises over [the man’s] body and causing [him] to seek medical attention for his injuries,” the complaint said.

In a letter Meneses wrote to the court while detained in county jail, he said that he and he man he battered had a fight about rent money. He said that he paid the man rent money that was spent elsewhere. On the day of the attack, he learned the home he was renting was in foreclosure. He also said the man did not go to the hospital right after the fight but drove to Wisconsin and went to a hospital there days later.

Meneses also wrote that he had been physically and sexually abused as a child, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and has at times self-medicated. While in jail, he said he attended not just the parenting classes but also meetings to address his alcoholism.

On Thursday, the cases dismissed included two counts of aggravated battery in a public place. That stems from allegations that earlier on the same day Meneses battered the man. At Walmart in Johnsburg earlier that day, Meneses “dumped fruit juice on [two employees] and threw the container at them after being asked to provide a receipt or proof of purchase while at the service desk,” according to the complaint.

In his letter he wrote that he had just learned the home he was living in was being foreclosed and had argued with the man he later battered. He then went to Walmart where he said he “felt attacked by the employee and I responded in an unmanly fashion, and I do accept responsibility for my action at the customer service desk.”

Later that day Meneses said he had “a meltdown” and the man he he pleaded guilty to battering allegedly tackled him, triggering a PTSD episode. He said he “honestly” could not remember if he did what he was accused of because his memory “went completely blank.”

In another case from 2023, Meneses pleaded guilty Thursday to violating the sex offender registry by not reporting a change in address, the indictment said. He was sentenced to 180 days in the county jail. He is on the registry because in Lake County when he was 18 he was convicted of criminal sexual abuse of a child who between the ages of 13 and 17, according to the registry.