Convicted sex offender caught masturbating, looking at porn at Riverside library
Timothy Schnulle | Chicago Police
SUN TIMES MEDIA WIRE - A man convicted of assaulting a child under the age of five was charged with masturbating, looking up porn and entering live porn chat rooms on a public computer at a library Thursday night in west suburban Riverside.
Timothy Schnulle, 43, was arrested at his home in Berwyn Friday night and admitted to looking at pornography, viewing live pornographic videos, talking about sexual acts in live chat rooms and masturbating and ejaculating at the library, according to Riverside Police.
He was charged Saturday morning with one felony count of violation of a sex-offender registration, police said.
At 6:48 p.m. Thursday, Riverside Police received a 911 call from a library supervisor reporting a person accessing porn on a library computer. The supervisor confronted Schnulle, who gave her a fake name, continued using the computer and then took off before officers arrived.
After reviewing surveillance videos, searching the library computer and interviewing witnesses, detectives identified Schnulle within two hours and staked out his home Friday night. When Schnulle left his house to go to his car, police arrested him without incident and took him to the North Riverside Police Department.
During what police called “a lengthy investigation,” they learned that Schnulle was a registered sex offender who was charged with second-degree sexual assault of a child under the age of five and several other sexual offenses in October 2013 in Wisconsin.
Per the terms and conditions of his sex offender registration, now in Illinois, Schnulle is prohibited from going on social media, porn websites, chat rooms or any other illegal sex-related outlets, police said. Schnulle told detectives he visited the Riverside Library several times over the last month and used his Google account to look at porn and enter live porn chat rooms every time.
Police said more charges against Schnulle are possible and the investigation is ongoing.
Schnulle, who graduated from Fenton High School in Bensenville and the University of Iowa, has lived in numerous areas in the metro Chicago area and in Madison, police said.
He works as a truck driver at a company in Alsip, where he has a Commercial Driver’s License and does deliveries, sometimes out-of-state. Schnulle has permission from his probation officer to travel out of state for his job, and police are looking into possible other offenses committed in places he has lived or traveled for work, police said.