Sep 17, 2008 5:16 pm US/Central
Girl Taken From Sandwich Shop, Sexually Assaulted
Police: Man Kindapped Victim As She Worked Alone In Palos Heights
PALOS HEIGHTS, Ill. (CBS) ―
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Crime scene tape surrounded the T.J. Grinders sub shop in Palos Heights Wednesday morning, after a girl was kidnapped from the restaurant and sexually assaulted the night before.
CBS
Police in southwest suburban Palos Heights are looking for a man who abducted a teenage girl as she worked alone in a sandwich shop and sexually assaulted her.
As CBS 2's Joanie Lum reports, police said the 17-year-old girl was abducted while at work at the T.J. Grinders at 12250 S. Harlem Ave.
The girl was hospitalized, and Palos Heights Police were conducting a second interview with the victim Wednesday evening. Until now she's been too traumatized to provide details for police to compose a composite sketch of her assailant.
Police tape was wrapped around the restaurant on Wednesday morning, as detectives conducted interviews and gathered evidence.
The girl was working at the sub shop on Tuesday evening. Sometime before the attack, she sent a text message to a male friend, saying there was a suspicious-looking customer hanging around the sub shop who was making her uncomfortable.
At 8:45 p.m., the same suspicious man came back. The girl was alone in the sub shop and staring through the window. She texted her friend again and asked him to come get her.
The friend was five minutes away at the time. But when her friend arrived, the girl had vanished. He saw her purse lying against the outside wall of the restaurant, which is located in a strip mall, along with her wallet and cell phone.
"When he got there he found the business was locked up. He found her purse strewn about the parking lot, and there was a chair knocked over outside, and cigarettes and cell phone were sitting on a table," said Palos Heights police Detective Sgt. Dave Delaney. "She was nowhere to be found."
The friend called police immediately, and police said they knew based on his reaction that the situation was dire. Thus, police came with the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force, the FBI, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
At 12:30 a.m., the victim walked up the driveway of her family's home. Officers by then were inside gathering information from her family.
The girl suffered multiple abrasions on her face and body, and was taken to Palos Community Hospital, also in Palos Heights, to be checked out. She indicated that she was sexually assaulted inside a vehicle, police said.
Police have not determined what happened to the girl in the three hours she was gone. She did tell police she was dropped off at 72nd Court, half a block west of Harlem Avenue, and was then left to walk home.
The victim said the assailant was in his 40s and was driving a black four-door sedan.
CBS 2's Derrick Blakely reports it's a crime that hits home for businesses in the strip mall; most are owned by women. For those open late, it underlies the importance of the most basic safety precautions.
"It shakes you to the bone, you know, especially a female," said bakery co-owner Cathy Baumann. "You think how terrifying that must have been, how tragic it is – how is she?"
"It's pretty safe around here, but of course, we're women," added Meghann Jensen, an employee of a nearby salon. "So we all try to walk out together and keep it safe around here, because you never know what's going to happen anywhere you work at, or any town you work in."
Linda Danet owns a salon in the mall, which some nights closes at 9 p.m.
"We do keep our alarm on at all times, and our door chimes when it opens or closes, our back door and our front door," she said. "Nobody's ever left here alone."
"Every time that we hire new people we ensure, we reiterate to them what precautions you want them to take," Baumann said. "Their safety and health is more important than the money in the till."
The restaurant faces the Palos Heights fire station. Baumann said firefighters on occasion would escort her to her car.
The owners of the TJ Grinders sandwich shop issued a statement Wednesday stating their deep concern for the victim and her family.
Police are walking around the area trying to determine whether any of the nearby businesses had surveillance cameras, which the sub shop did not.
CBS 2's Joanie Lum and Derrick Blakley contributed to this report.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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