A man who’s on parole for three felonies boarded a Green Line train at the Roosevelt station and then robbed and tried to sexually assault a female tourist who was on his train car this month, prosecutors said Friday.
Darren Jones, 21, is charged with robbery, aggravated battery, and attempted criminal sexual assault. Judge Arthur Willis ordered him held without bail.
Surveillance video shows Jones walking along Michigan Avenue in the Loop and then entering the Roosevelt CTA station around 11 a.m. on April 1, according to Assistant State’s Attorney James Murphy and police records. There, he allegedly boarded a southbound Green Line train car with one other rider — a woman from out of town who was traveling with her suitcase.
As the train moved along, Jones walked across the car and asked the woman to perform oral sex, Murphy said. The woman told him to leave her alone.
According to Murphy, Jones returned to his seat for a moment and then approached the woman again with his penis exposed as he pleasured himself. Jones leaned into the woman as she pulled herself away and told him to leave, he said.
At that point, Jones allegedly grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her toward his penis, and slapped her by pulling his arm “all the way back” and swinging it into her face, Murphy continued.
The woman tried to run away, but Jones allegedly grabbed her from behind, and the two began fighting on the train. He took her purse from her jacket and ran out the door when the train pulled into the next station, Murphy said. The victim also got off the train and called police.
CTA surveillance cameras recorded the entire encounter and police distributed photos of the attack to officers in an effort to identify the attacker. A cop recognized Jones and the victim subsequently picked Jones out of the photo array, Murphy said. Police put Jones under surveillance and arrested him Wednesday morning on the 1200 block of South Michigan, about a block from the Roosevelt station.
Illinois Department of Corrections records show Jones was released early from prison on October 5 after serving half of three felony sentences he received in 2019: two years for escape and a pair of concurrent one-year terms for illegally possessing guns.
Authorities are considering revocation of his parole in light of the new allegations.
The alleged attack on the Green Line unfolded just days after another man was charged with following a woman from the Belmont Red Line and sexually assaulting her in a Lakeview alley.
Prosecutors said the man who carried out the Lakeview attack was on probation for robbery in connection with another attack on a woman on the Red Line in 2019. The accused man, Antoine Jackson, was supposed to be on electronic monitoring at the time of the crime, but he never arranged to have the device attached, according to court records