A second teen boy has been arrested in connection with the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl that was streamed last month on Facebook Live, police said. NBC 5’s Chris Hush reports.
A second teen boy has been arrested in connection with the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl that was streamed last month on Facebook Live, police said.
The 15-year-old boy, accompanied by his mother, turned himself in to Chicago police on Monday, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. The boy was being questioned before going to juvenile detention.
Over the weekend, a 14-year-old boy was also arrested in connection with the attack, and both suspects were charged as juveniles with aggravated criminal assault, manufacturing of child porn and dissemination of child porn.
Detectives said they are working to identify "several other offenders" in what Chicago's police chief called an "absolutely horrific" assault.
Police said social media search warrants, obtained by working with Facebook, led detectives to identify two offenders and secure arrest warrants.
"The young men responsible, they should be ashamed of themselves," Supt. Eddie Johnson said Sunday. "They humiliated themselves, humiliated their families, and now they're going to be held accountable for what they did."
Police have said about 40 people viewed the attack on Facebook while it was happening, but none of them reported it to police.
A day after the March 19 attack, police said the victim's mother received still shots of her daughter being sexually assaulted.
The woman then reported her daughter missing, and on March 21 she approached Johnson as he was leaving a police station in the Lawndale neighborhood.
"Not only was she upset, I was visibly upset from what I saw," Johnson said.
Since the assault, the victim has been bullied online, police said.
She has since been moved from her home to a "safe place," community activist Andrew Holmes said. She and her mother are receiving counseling.
"As a father of young women myself, I am so inspired by her strength," Johnson said, "and while I know the emotional wounds caused by this savagery will take long to heal, I'm hopeful that her story can be an inspiration to so many other young women who are victimized by bullying and sexual assault,"
The investigation is ongoing, Johnson said.
