Parolee charged in August sex assault at Near North Side store

 

A man on parole in three 2011 cellphone thefts on the Near North Side has been charged with sexually assaulting a woman over the summer at a store blocks away from where the thefts took place.
Michael Roberson, 30, has been charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault and kidnapping using deceit in the Aug. 6 attack at a store near Illinois and State streets.
Roberson, of the 7900 block of South Ingleside Avenue, is on parole in the November 2011 thefts and was taken back into custody this month. He also was wanted for jumping bail in two theft cases from this spring.
The August attack happened as a woman was closing a Near North store about 10:15 p.m. Aug. 6.
The attacker had been in the store near East Illinois and State streets earlier in the evening and returned around 10 p.m. saying he had left something in the restroom. The woman, 42, let him in and the man pulled a knife and forced her into the restroom in the back of the store.
He trapped her in a stall, smoked crack cocaine and assaulted her, at one point stopping her from escaping. The woman then heard her husband walking around inside the store and screamed for help, police said. The husband, 36, went to the back of the store and began fighting with the attacker, suffering cuts to his head.
The attacker ran to the front of the store but found the door locked. The husband grabbed a bat and started chasing the attacker, but the attacker was able to grab keys off the counter, unlock the front door and flee east on Illinois Street.
The woman was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for treatment.
In the 2011 thefts, Roberson was arrested Nov. 21 after a woman recognized him as someone who had stolen her iPhone about an hour earlier from a restaurant near Dearborn and Division streets. Roberson was found to have two more stolen iPhones, and was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty in the thefts.
At the time of the Near North attack this summer, Roberson was free on bond in three cases from May and early June, committed after he was released from prison on May 9. Roberson had already been released from prison in the 2011 downtown theft cases sometime before, but had been arrested again Feb. 2 after criminally trespassing in a building in the 400 block of West Sullivan Street in Old Town about 10:38 p.m. that day. He was sentenced to 50 days in jail in that case after pleading guilty.
In the cases from this spring, Roberson is accused of thefts that took place May 14 about 1 p.m. in the 500 block of West North Avenue and May 29 about 11:25 a.m. in the 200 block of North Michigan Avenue. He was arrested June 3 after assaulting someone at a convenience store in first block of East Wacker Drive about 7:30 a.m., but released on $40,000 bond.
After a warrant was sworn out for his arrest when he failed to show up in court Aug. 14 in the May and June cases, on Aug. 19 police obtained a warrant for Roberson’s arrest on charges of aggravated criminal sexual assault and kidnapping in the Aug. 6 attack.
The no bail warrant in the May and June cases was let stand in a court hearing Monday, according to court records. Roberson, who is being held at Cook County Jail, has not yet appeared in court in the sexual assault case