A man who has been arrested 30 times by Chicago police made a critical mistake after robbing a woman at a downtown CTA station last week, prosecutors say: He later walked into the fast-food restaurant where she worked, and she flagged down a passing patrol car to alert police.
Around 3:40 p.m. on July 29, the 39-year-old woman was at the Lake Red Line station when Davon Thomas, 29, sat down next to her and asked if she had any minutes on the phone she was holding, according to a detention filing.
Thomas then looked around to see if anyone was watching before slapping the woman’s hand down, taking her phone and fleeing, the filing said. CTA surveillance cameras recorded the robbery, and detectives quickly distributed photos of the suspect to the city’s transit cops.
About four hours later, the victim was working at Taco Bell, 178 North Wabash Avenue, when she saw the man who had robbed her inside the dining room, according to prosecutors. She watched him leave the restaurant and walk toward State Street, then flagged down police and described what he was wearing, the filing said.
Officers suspected Thomas would return to the Red Line, so they started their search there. They arrested him after he jumped the turnstile at the Jackson Red Line station, according to the filing.
Thomas’ arrest report said the officers recognized him from internal bulletins about the woman’s robbery and another robbery reported earlier that day. He has not been charged with the second crime.
Judge Antara Rivera ordered Thomas detained on a robbery charge. He was already on pretrial release at the time of the robbery for a misdemeanor retail theft case filed July 9.
Thomas’ 30 arrests in Chicago since 2015 have resulted in two felony convictions: a 2016 robbery ended with probation, and a 2024 aggravated battery conviction resulted in a two-year prison sentence.
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