Sex Offender Caught Loitering In Children's Play Area At McDonald's: Sheriff
COOK COUNTY, Ill. (CBS) – A 36-year-old convicted sexual predator was arrested after loitering in the children's play area of a McDonald's restaurant in Elk Grove Township, the Cook County Sheriff's Department said.
Joseph O'Brien, 36, was charged with a Class 3 felony of failing to update his address to police and with criminal trespassing on Dec. 22 after the manager of a McDonald's on East Higgins Road called authorities to report an adult loitering, the sheriff's office said.
Witnesses told police O'Brien was inside the indoor play area near a table where a group of mothers and children were sitting. Patrons said O'Brien was staring at an 11-year-old girl before he was told to leave, the sheriff's office said in a news release.
The manager told sheriff's investigators O'Brien had been asked to leave the play area on several other occasions.
Investigators learned O'Brien is a registered sex offender – classified as a "sexual predator" – who had been staying at a motel near the restaurant and not at his registered address in Maine Township, the news release said.
O'Brien has been arrested 24 times since 1995. In 2001, he was convicted in Cook County of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and bodily harm, the sheriff's office said. In October 2006 and again in July 2010 he was charged with failing to register as a sex offender, the sheriff's department said.
O'Brien made an initial court appearance in Rolling Meadows on Dec. 24. His bond was set at $75,000. He remains in custody at Cook County Jail.
His next court appearance is scheduled for 9 a.m. Jan. 18 in Rolling Meadows.
