A 35-year-old man was arrested for robbing a staffer of Illinois Senate President Don Harmon at knifepoint on Friday at the Democratic lawmaker’s district office in Oak Park, authorities said.
Scott Loeffler was charged with armed robbery after authorities say he displayed a knife at the staffer and took her iPhone, Cook County court records show.
The staffer was not hurt during the incident, which occurred at Harmon’s district office in the 6900 block of West North Avenue in Oak Park, and Harmon said in a statement on Sunday that it did not appear “to have been politically motivated.”
“On Friday, a man entered the district office and confronted an employee with a knife. Thank God she is physically unharmed,” Harmon’s statement said. “I want to thank the Oak Park Police Department for a quick response, and I want to thank my staff for their bravery and unwavering commitment to public service. Their safety is my top priority.”
A Harmon spokesperson said the Senate president was in the same office space but in a different room when the robbery occurred, and that he did not see the suspect.
An assistant to Harmon reported that shortly after 11 a.m. Friday, a man knocked on the door of the North Avenue constituents office, according to Dan Yopchick, a spokesperson for the village of Oak Park. Believing the man to be a constituent, the assistant let him in.
The man asked “about a bill,” and at one point, when the assistant looked away and turned back, the man was holding a knife in one hand and the assistant’s cellphone in the other, Yopchick said.
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He said the man asked, “Do you have a wallet?” The assistant stood up and went to a door leading to Harmon’s campaign office, where a different assistant called 911, Yopchick said.
According to prosecutors, after the man fled the scene, Harmon’s staffer tracked her phone’s location, which allowed police to detain him.
Yopchick said Loeffler was arrested shortly before 1 p.m. that day in the 1700 block of North Narragansett Avenue in Chicago, about a mile from Harmon’s office. According to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, the assistant then identified the man who was arrested as the one who had robbed her.
Loeffler, whose last known address was on Chicago’s North Side, was scheduled to appear before a judge on the armed robbery charge on Sunday at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse. A status hearing is scheduled for Tuesday at the Fourth Municipal District Court of Cook County in Maywood, according to prosecutors.
baiduhai reporters Laura Turbay and Adriana Pérez contributed.