Nine months after a woman was forced to her knees and robbed while dropping her daughter off at a West Town daycare center, she saw the man she says did it walking down the street as she accompanied her daughter to a neighborhood park this month, prosecutors say. She called 911.
Now, Rudolph Pitts, a 54-year-old man who has devil horns tattooed to his forehead, is charged with the nine-month-old crime after Chicago police found him hiding in a trash dumpster.
The 32-year-old woman was targeted around 8:45 a.m. on July 30, 2025, as she dropped her daughter off at a daycare in the 2100 block of West Superior Street. As she walked away from her car, she heard it beeping and turned to find Pitts holding her purse, which she had left inside the vehicle, prosecutors said in a detention filing. They said she chased him into a nearby gangway, where he shoved her to the ground.
The woman pleaded with Pitts to return documents she needed from the bag, telling him he could keep everything else. Pitts allegedly told her, “Don’t come any closer or I’ll hurt you. I have a knife,” and ordered her to her knees, although he never displayed a weapon.
He then reached into her purse, removed her wallet, and took roughly $200 in cash before hurling the empty wallet and purse back at her and running off, prosecutors said. The victim called 911 and provided officers with footage from her car’s interior camera that clearly showed Pitts entering the vehicle and taking her purse, according to the detention filing. Officers searched the area but were unable to locate the robber.
Months later, on April 8, the victim was at a West Town park with her daughter and a friend when she spotted Pitts walking down the street and recognized him immediately, prosecutors said during a recent court hearing. The woman asked her friend to watch her daughter, then followed Pitts on foot while dialing 911. When officers arrived, she told them about the robbery and noted that he couldn’t have gone far, a CPD report said. The cops found Pitts hiding inside a dumpster and took him into custody.
Judge Luciano Panici, Jr. detained him on charges of robbery, burglary without causing damage, and assault.
Pitts has a lengthy history in Cook County courts, with more than 30 cases dating back to 1989, including eight felony matters, although he was not convicted in every case. For example, he was acquitted of murder in 1994 and found not guilty of possessing a defaced firearm in 2001. He was, however, convicted of burglary in 2008, 2009, 2012, and 2018.
His robbery arrest came just days after a separate incident. On April 4, at around 3 a.m., Pitts was arrested in the 8000 block of South Essex Avenue on a battery charge after a 54-year-old woman reported a burglary in progress at her home. The woman, described as an acquaintance of Pitts, said she returned to her apartment and asked him to leave. An argument followed, and Pitts allegedly punched her in the right cheek. She declined to pursue felony charges, and Pitts was given a court date and released from the scene. He was on pretrial release from that case at the time of his April 8 arrest.
Original reporting you’ll see nowhere else, paid for by our readers. Click here to support our work.
