Testimony: Fingerprints from Arlington Heights sex assault match suspect's
A fingerprint expert testified Wednesday that palm and fingerprints found at an apartment in an Arlington Heights assisted living and retirement facility match those of the Mount Prospect man charged with sexually assaulting the 97-year-old woman who lived there.
Frank Mendez, 53, has been charged with sexually assaulting and striking the woman after he broke into her first floor apartment in the Church Creek facility on Aug. 20, 2015. Mendez, who was also charged with criminal trespass related to a separate incident that same day, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Charles A. Schauer, who works for the investigations firm R.E. Walsh & Associates in Oak Brook, testified that Arlington Heights police asked him to analyze unknown fingerprints found in the woman's apartment and a palm print located on the window frame.
Schauer testified he submitted the fingerprints to the FBI, whose "fingerprint database is a repository for all fingerprints from the U.S." However, the prints found at the woman's apartment initially did not match any in the FBI database, Schauer said.
About a month later, on Sept. 25, 2015, Schauer told jurors he received a notification from the FBI that the prints he submitted matched Mendez, who by then was in the custody of Arlington Heights police on the criminal trespass charge.
Under cross examination from Cook County assistant public defender Joe Gump, Schauer testified that he compared photographs of the latent fingerprints found at the scene with a photograph of the fingerprints police took from Mendez.
Arlington Heights police took Mendez into custody on Sept. 24, 2014, after detective Christopher Sefton recognized Mendez from an artist's sketch of the man suspected in the criminal trespass case. Sefton was doing surveillance for an Illinois State Police narcotics investigation, when he noticed Mendez riding his bike near Golf Road.
Sefton testified he believed he "had reasonable grounds to make contact" with Mendez based on his resemblance to the sketch. When the officer identified himself and asked to speak to him, Mendez "took off on his bike at a high rate of speed," Sefton said.
Fellow officers stopped Mendez nearby and took him to the police station where police read him his rights, fingerprinted him and took a DNA sample, he said.
Testimony continues Thursday in Rolling Meadows.