Jurors this week have watched hours of surveillance footage that’s central to Cook County prosecutors’ case against Tony Robinson, a homeless man accused of fatally stabbing visiting graduate student Anat Kimchi.
In one video, a man resembling Robinson is seen running with a knife near the scene of the unprovoked killing in Downtown Chicago. In another, the man is shown tossing something in the direction of the Chicago River.
Prosecutors are using the videos to try to get jurors to connect the dots between Robinson and the man who has been shown onscreen in Judge John F. Lyke Jr.’s courtroom at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse.
However, none of the videos captured the deadly attack on June 19, 2021, near Wacker Drive and Van Buren Street, just a short distance from Willis Tower. Kimchi, a 31-year-old grad student at the University of Maryland, was in town visiting a friend when she was killed on that sunny Saturday afternoon.
Her murder was one of several shocking cases examined in a Chicago Sun-Times investigation last year into violent attacks in the Downtown area.
Most of the videos played for jurors Tuesday show a man resembling Robinson roaming Lower Wacker near Van Buren. Robinson, 45, lived in a tent nearby.
A video shot in the direction of a parking lot near Franklin Street, Van Buren Street and Wacker Drive shows Kimchi walking south on Wacker as a man approaches just before the attack.
In video from a different camera, taken moments after the stabbing at 3:33 p.m., a person wearing a dark T-shirt can be seen hurrying from the direction of the crime scene, then running north into the Lower Wacker tunnel while holding an object in his right hand. Chicago police Detective Jessica Highland testified Tuesday that the object was a knife.
But Highland acknowledged Wednesday that videos from Lower Wacker aren’t particularly high-quality. She noted that fluorescent lighting on the lower-level street can cause distortion and glare.
Another video, taken at 3:34 p.m., shows a person on Lower Wacker taking off a black T-shirt and leaving it in an alcove.
Police later recovered the black T-shirt. And on Wednesday, Illinois State Police forensic scientist Michael Mathews testified that DNA on the shirt was “850 septillion times” more likely to be Robinson’s than anyone else’s.
Mathews also testified that the T-shirt and other items recovered by police from a search of Robinson’s tent on Lower Wacker didn’t have blood or DNA from Kimchi on them.
Dr. Benjamin Soriano, assistant Cook County medical examiner, testified that of the three stab wounds, the lethal one was on the upper left side of Kimchi’s back, which cut into her aorta causing internal bleeding “deep into the body.”
Under questioning from the prosecution he testified that could explain why Kimchi’s blood was not found on the defendant’s clothing. “There was significant bleeding into the inside of the body” of the victim, he said.
Jurors saw another video Wednesday from shortly after the slaying that shows a person on Lower Wacker throwing an object in the direction of the Chicago River. A police marine unit searched the river for a knife but didn’t recover anything.
In her opening statement Monday, Assistant State’s Attorney Anna Sedelmaier told jurors that Robinson stabbed Kimchi “and then he fled after stabbing her and leaving her to die.”
“The cameras place him and only him where and when this happened,” she said.
She said Robinson regularly roamed Lower Wacker, “a place to be unseen.”
Defense attorneys have said Robinson is innocent. They’ve tried to undermine eyewitness testimony by Tavon Jones, who also was homeless in 2021 and tried to stop the attack, by saying Jones’ description of the offender to police didn’t match Robinson’s age, height, clothing or hairstyle.
Robinson opted not to testify in his defense.
After jurors were dismissed for the day Wednesday, paramedics were called for a young female juror who could be heard retching and was taken out of the jury room in a wheelchair.
Judge Lyke denied a defense motion for a directed verdict in favor of Robinson.
Assistant Public Defender Robyn Haynes argued that there was no physical evidence tying Robinson to the murder and that police “just zeroed in on the first person” they found on Lower Wacker.
Sedelmaier pointed to Jones, who “saw with his own eyes” what happened, as well as the “voluminous” video footage pointing to Robinson’s guilt.
Contributing: Frank Main