Man pretending to need help attacks teen in a Little Village alley, mom claims

CHICAGO (WLS) -- A Chicago mother has a warning for other parents after she said her daughter was nearly raped on the way to school in Little Village.

"I just don't want this to happen to nobody else's children," said the victim's mother.

Chicago police said around 8:15 a.m. Friday, a male suspect attempted to sexually assault an 18-year-old woman in the 2300 block of South Homan.

A mother, who only wanted to be identified as "Nell," said the victim is her daughter.

Nell said she had finally agreed to let her daughter walk to school by herself when the incident happened. The teen said there was a man who pretended to need help taking out his trash in the alley when she was attacked.

The victim spoke with ABC7 on the condition that we did not show her face or name her.

"I see the shadow, and he's walking up behind me. He's pulling my pants down [and] he's trying to take my shirt off, and he was pushing my face inside of the garbage can," the victim said. "So he was going to close my head in there and rape me. He was going to rape me inside of the garbage can."

The teen said she managed to elbow the man.

"He threw me into the brick wall and then he proceeded to laugh," the teen recalled. "He watched me walk away and his last words were: 'The next time I see you, I'm going to get it.'"

The victim said other people were in the area as this brazen daylight attack unfolded, but added that they did nothing.

"It's even more disheartening because she was doing what she was taught to do, which is, if you see someone in need of help or in distress -- to help them," Nell said.

The teen said she eventually made it to school but didn't tell officials about the scarring incident until her second-period class when her emotions spilled over.

Police shared a vague description of the suspect, and his vehicle, which police describe as a white van without side windows and some paint missing.

Now, Nell and her daughter believe they've identified the attacker off of a sex offender registry and are trying to get that information to police while also hoping to get surveillance video from nearby cameras.

"We have a sexual predator on the loose that's trying to harm our children," Nell stressed. "My biggest worry was that he would have killed my child had people hadn't started walking past."