University of Iowa police investigator testifies mother helped son flee prosecution

IOWA CITY — A police lieutenant testified Tuesday that the mother of a man charged with attempting to rob and kill a woman last year on the University of Iowa campus helped sell the family vehicle before taking her son to a Chicago airport to skip the country — a week before his trial was set to start in Johnson County.

UI police Lt. Travis Tyrrell said police were alerted that the GPS ankle monitor of Ali Younes, 20, had been cut May 6, 2022, in Northwest Iowa’s O’Brien County, where he lived with his parents, Lima Younes, who is on trial this week, and Alfred Younes, charged separately in the case.

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Lima Younes is charged with escape from custody, a felony. She is accused of aiding and abetting her son to intentionally escape the GPS-monitored house arrest. If convicted, she faces up to five years in prison. The trial is expected to last all week.

When authorities arrived that May 6 in Sutherland to check on the alert, no one was home and the family’s vehicle, a GMC Arcadia, was missing.

Tyrrell, the only witness called Tuesday following jury selection, said investigators later found the Arcadia had been sold to a dealership in Omaha, Neb., by Lima and Alfred Younes. Police received surveillance video showing that the family instead was driving a rented white Chrysler Pacifica van.

Investigators, after using vehicle location data from the van and surveillance footage to track down the family, talked to Lima Younes over the phone, who said the family was returning home from Davenport. But police tracked her husband’s phone, which indicated they were traveling from Chicago to Dubuque instead.

Police made a traffic stop on the Pacifica, and officers took the couple’s cellphones but let the couple go back home.

Tyrrell said two days later, authorities received information that Ali Younes and his grandmother had flown from O’Hare International Airport to Jordan on May 6.

When investigators later obtained a search warrant for the house in Sutherland, they found the abandoned ankle monitor on the kitchen floor, Tyrrell said. Officers searched the house for Ali Younes, but he wasn’t there. His wallet with his driver’s’ license, his two cellphones and his identification card from the UI, where he was a student, were also found in the house.

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On May 7, 2022, police received surveillance footage from the owner of a gas station and car wash across the street from the Younes’ home, Tyrrell said. The Pacifica van, on the video, was seen pulling out of the garage just after 9 a.m. May 6, a few minutes after Ali Younes’ ankle monitor was cut.

Tyrrell said the van was rented in Sioux City and its GPS data showed it traveled from the Sutherland home to O’Hare, then to Wisconsin and back to Sutherland. Investigators found surveillance footage taken from a parking lot at O’Hare used for international flights, which showed Ali and grandmother walking from that parking lot before they boarded a flight to Jordan.

Alfred Younes then booked a flight May 8 or 9, going from Omaha to Chicago and then to Jordan. He was free to travel then because it was before a warrant was issued for his arrest, Tyrrell said.

But he was arrested May 9 by the Omaha Police Department’s Fugitive Apprehension Unit and the Omaha Airport Authority while he was attempting to board the flight in Omaha, according to court documents. He was to be extradited back to Johnson County to face charges.

Ali Younes remains a fugitive because Jordan doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States. Tyrrell, under cross exam, said he was allowed to live in Sutherland with an ankle monitor while on house arrest.

According to a criminal complaint, Ali Younes on April 25, 2022, followed a woman on foot, tackled her near the UI Art Building West, strangled her until she lost consciousness and stole her earrings valued at $20,000. He was facing trial on attempted murder, first-degree robbery and first-degree theft charges.

The prosecution will continue its case Wednesday.

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