The family of an 11-year-old girl sexually assaulted in the Washington Park neighborhood was outraged Tuesday that a man believed to have committed the crime was released from police custody.
After the attempted rape occurred Thursday afternoon as the girl walked home from school in the 6200 block of South Indiana Avenue, the girl’s relatives shared a police sketch of the suspect on social media.
On Monday, a group of neighbors saw a man in an alley near where the attack happened who appeared to match the sketch and held him until police arrived and took him into custody, the girl’s grandmother said at a news conference outside Chicago Police Department headquarters.
Before handing over the man to police, one of the neighbors took a picture of the suspect and texted the girl’s family.
The grandmother said she was at Walmart on Monday with her granddaughter when the text with a photo appeared on her phone.
“I showed it to my granddaughter. I said, ‘Who is this?’ She broke down. ‘Oh my God, granny, that’s him.’ She started crying. We had to hold her. We walked out,” the grandmother said.
The girl’s mother said police explained to her that because the girl had seen the photo, it tainted the possibility of identifying the man in a photo lineup.
“Police said they weren’t able to keep him because my daughter had seen the photo of him,” the mother said.
“I will not accept that,” the grandmother said. “I’m angry, a little bit I am, because I know they let him go. He’s going to try to do it to somebody else.”
Police Supt. David Brown, during a separate news conference, declined to discuss how the photo being seen by the girl affected the case but noted the man, despite being released, remains a suspect.
“I want to defer comment on that for now,” Brown said. “We’ll come back to it. We just want to give our detectives an opportunity to get the work done that will hopefully lead to an arrest and charges.”
Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan added: “I don’t want to really get into that. That’s obviously not a positive photo array.”
Brown acknowledged that the community wants results in the case.
“Emotions are running high,” he said. “We do have a sense of urgency, but we have to get things right. We have to do it right so that we can have the best chance of getting charges approved ... and so that the charges will stick.”
“We’re going as fast as we can,” Brown said.
The girl’s mother said her daughter has been traumatized.
“She really ain’t herself. She’s not really on TikTok anymore. She’s not eating. She’s having nightmares,” her mother said.
The girl’s grandmother said the girl kicked the man and ran away when he paused during the assault to answer his cellphone.
“Through the grace of God, I wrestle with my granddaughter, and I make her run a lot,” said her grandfather, a military veteran who works at the Jesse Brown Medical Center.
