Prosecutors on Wednesday said a Blue Island man chained a woman to the wall of a South Side home for three days and raped her twice before a passerby heard the victim’s cries for help and summoned police.
The passerby streamed on Facebook Live as police and fire department personnel responded to the home on the 11100 block of South Eggleston on May 21.
Joel Cammon, 44, is charged with aggravated kidnapping and aggravated criminal sexual assault. Judge Barbara Dawkins ordered him held without bail at the request of prosecutors.
“This is a heinous act of, essentially, torture,” Assistant State’s Attorney Danny Hanichak told Dawkins during Cammon’s bail hearing.
Hanichak said Cammon, who worked as a “quasi-security guard” at a business near the abandoned home, knew the 36-year-old homeless woman because he had previously paid her for sex.
They crossed paths on May 18, and the woman agreed to meet Cammon in the home’s basement for paid sex, Hanichak said.
But the two began arguing in the basement, with Cammon allegedly saying he was “sick of paying you b*tches for sex just for you to rush me.”
He then used his handcuffs to restrain the woman and dragged her to the attic, where he chained her right leg to the wall, Hanichak alleged. There, Cammon sexually assaulted the woman, then left the home, leaving her restrained and alone overnight, Hanichak said.
The woman banged on the walls and yelled for help, but no one came to her aid.
Cammon returned the next day and raped her again while she was handcuffed and chained to the wall, according to Hanichak. The woman begged him to stop and pleaded to be let go, but Cammon left her alone again, Hanichak said.
She continued to bang on the wall and scream for help for two more days until Antione Dobine heard her as he walked to a nearby bus stop. Dobine called for help and started telling the story on a Facebook stream that went viral.
In Dobine’s video, a police officer walked to the rear of the abandoned home with a large set of bolt cutters in his hand.
“She’s handcuffed and chained to a wall,” the officer said.
An exterior surveillance camera captured footage that corroborated some aspects of the woman’s story, Hanichak said.
The victim and two other women who know Cammon from the neighborhood identified him. DNA test results are still pending.
Police set up surveillance on Cammon’s home, but he never returned there, according to Hanichak. A fugitive task force arrested Cammon in the suburbs Tuesday, according to a CPD statement.
Hanichak said Cammon was convicted of robbery in 1995 and animal neglect in 2006.
The latter case involved allegations that Cammon tied a dog to a pole without food, water, or shelter.
Hanichak argued that a no-bail hold is appropriate for Cammon because he “is willing to do something like this to, not a dog like it was in the first case, but to another human being.”
Assistant Public Defender Patrick Shine questioned why nobody heard the woman screaming and banging on the wall for three days.
He said Cammon is homeless, has no children, works in a packing plant, and has mental health issues.
