A panhandler shoved an 82-year-old woman to the ground outside an Uptown fast food restaurant, breaking her knee, because she didn’t give him money, officials said as a judge ordered the accused man detained pending trial.
Prosecutors said Dion Rance, 49, was panhandling near the drive-through of the McDonald’s at 1004 West Wilson Avenue around 10 a.m. on September 15 when the woman, a Lakeview resident who visits the restaurant almost daily for breakfast, walked out.
Surveillance video allegedly shows Rance following her along the sidewalk before extending an arm and shoving her in the back. The woman fell face-first onto the concrete, screaming in pain, while Rance walked away, prosecutors said.
A passerby rushed to help the woman, who returned to her nearby apartment building, where a staffer called 911. She was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center with a fractured knee and additional injuries to her face and body from the fall, prosecutors said.
Police who reviewed the surveillance video immediately recognized Rance and placed his image into a photo lineup. But the victim, who suffers from cataracts, could not identify him, according to a detention filing.
Officers recently found Rance walking in the 5300 block of North Clark in Andersonville and took him into custody.
Prosecutors said he admitted asking the woman for money but claimed he pushed her because she called him the N-word in Chinese. Rance told officers he went to school with “a Chinese guy who taught him a lot,” the filing stated. Curiously, a court document states the victim speaks Japanese.
Rance also allegedly told investigators that “people in Uptown are racist and don’t give any money.”
Judge James Murphy III ordered Rance detained on charges of aggravated battery of a victim over 60 and aggravated battery in a public place.
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