Another teenager has been charged in the brutal attack of an intoxicated 18-year-old Highland Park woman outside a New Year’s Eve concert at the Congress Theater, authorities said.
Charles Chuning, 16, didn’t fondle, sexually assault or rob the victim like his co-defendants Terrance Ford and Aanwar Barbour did, Cook County prosecutors said Wednesday.
But Chuning helped carry the victim to another location where Ford raped the woman while Chuning and several others watched in a semi-circle, at 2158 N. Rockwell, assistant state’s attorney Sean O’Callaghan said.
Chuning and five others had joined Ford and Barbour at a Logan Square restaurant where they met the woman, who had been separated by her friends after she was denied entry at a concert at the theater because she didn’t have an ID, O’Callaghan said.
The victim was eventually helped outside and when a witness saw Ford and Barbour fondling her against a chain-link fence at Rockwell and Milwaukee, Chuning suggested they move her “down the street,” O’Callaghan said
Ford, Barbour and Chuning took turns carrying the teenager and when Chuning noticed she was bleeding from a fall during her encounter with the male teens, he dropped her in a bush, O’Callaghan said
A $500,000 arrest warrant had been issued for Chuning, who was originally just charged with kidnapping. The former DeLaSalle High School student was in North Carolina attending a boarding school, his attorney said, adding that the teenager swiftly returned to the area when he learned he was wanted.
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Since then, Chuning has also been charged with aggravated sexual assault and robbery based on accountability statutes.
Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil ordered Chuning held on $750,000 bail Wednesday.
Because Chuning was previously enrolled at a school in Spain, Kuriakos Ciesil also asked him to surrender his passport.
Chuning’s relatives refused comment following Wednesday’s hearing.
