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| Victoria Dollarson (inset) and CTA surveillance images of the attack. | Chicago Police Dept |
A woman accused of throwing an 81-year-old man down the stairs of a Loop CTA station during a robbery last October has been sentenced to seven years in prison.
Victoria Dollarson, 26, pleaded guilty last week to robbing a victim over the age of 60. Given credit for 195 days time served and a 50% sentence reduction for anticipated good behavior, Dollarson will be paroled in about three years. Judge James Obbish approved the plea deal.
On October 16, 2017, an elderly man was severely injured after being thrown down the stairs of the Wabash Brown Line station during a robbery. Surveillance video showed the robber grabbing the victim’s hand and phone as he stepped off of a train around 9:25 p.m., police said. A struggle ensued and the victim fell down the station staircase. He suffered bleeding on the brain, a cut to his head, swelling and bruising.
When police released a community alert seeking to identify the attacker, tips began flowing immediately. A CWBChicago reader who saw the alert seeking an “unknown male” in the attack identified the wanted person as Dollarson, a woman who frequented social service agencies in Lakeview.
The morning after the attack and still days before she would be arrested, Dollarson wrote on Facebook, “It don’t even matter from this point. I’m definitely going back to jail smh. I can’t deal with life. Tired of struggling. Tired of trying with a marriage that wasn’t gone last. Tired of my FUCKING LIFE PERIOD. Maybe I’m better off locked up. 15 years here I come. Mommy sorry baby, if I loved you like I claimed I did, I wouldn’t be in the situation I’m in…..”
Soon, acquaintances and strangers from across the internet were responding to Dollarson’s status update, urging her to turn herself it, posting links to media reports of the CTA attack, and worse.
Court records show Dollarson pleaded guilty to a manufacture-delivery of crack cocaine and received two-years probation in April 2017. A domestic violence arrest in September was recorded as a violation of her probation, but Judge Thomas Gainer reinstated the original sentence. The next month, Dollarson attacked the 81-year-old man.
