Man charged with fatally stabbing Maryland grad student in the Loop
University of Maryland graduate student Anat Kimchi stabbed to death in Chicago
Anat was already a notably accomplished scholar, but more importantly she was a remarkable woman who was beloved by friends and family, wrote University of Maryland Professor Gary LaFree in an email sent to the campus community.
CHICAGO - A 41-year-old man is facing murder charges in the fatal stabbing of a Maryland grad student in the Loop last weekend.
Tony Robinson was arrested Thursday after he was identified as the person who stabbed Anat Kimchi, 31, around 4 p.m. last Saturday in the 400 block of South Wacker Drive, Chicago police said. She was pronounced dead at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
Tony Robinson | CPD
Kimchi was a Maryland graduate student who had been working on her doctoral degree in criminology and criminal justice.
Chicago's financial district is a few blocks from the crime scene, but the area where Kimchi was killed is secluded and not the sort of place you'd find a lot of pedestrians. The stabbed occurred next to an area where homeless people camp.
Investigators were able to identify Robinson through video surveillance of the attack and with the help of a cooperating witness, police said.
Robinson was charged with one county each of first-degree murder, armed robbery with a dangerous weapon, aggravated robbery in a public place, aggravated robbery with great bodily harm and aggravated battery with use of a deadly weapon, police said.
Robinson was also linked to two other armed robberies where he attacked a woman by approaching her from behind and hitting them with an object.
- On June 10, the man struck a 25-year-old woman in the head from behind as she walked on a sidewalk in the 500 block of South Franklin Street around 9:30 p.m. The woman was hospitalized in fair condition.
- Around 7:10 p.m. June 13, he struck a 50-year-old woman with a "long heavy object" as she walked in the first block of East Ida B. Wells Drive. The woman dropped her personal items and the man took them, then hit her two more times before he fled, police said. The woman was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital with lacerations to the head.
He was expected in bond court Saturday.
FOX 32 News contributed to this report.