A Chicago man accused in 2008 of brutally attacking a woman and knocking out her teeth after she refused to give him a cigarette on a South Loop street was arrested Monday for threatening to kill a man in the city's Uptown neighborhood.
Derrick King, 50, of the 900 block of West Lawrence Avenue, was charged with misdemeanor assault after he allegedly followed a man from the CTA "L" station at Wilson Avenue and asked him repeatedly for money around 6:30 p.m. Monday, the Chicago Tribune reports. When the man said he did not have any, King allegedly said, "I'll kill you if you don't give me any money," according to a police report.
King, along with Joyce Burgess, was convicted of robbery in the 2008 attack of Jennifer Hall and her boyfriend near the intersection of Roosevelt and Wabash, according to ABC Chicago. He was reportedly angry that the couple did not give him a cigarette.
Since being convicted of that crime, King received an early release from prison as part of a Department of Corrections program and, according to the Tribune, threatened another woman in 2009, one day after he was released from prison. He reportedly returned to jail after a second incident but was released, again, late last year. He has been arrested for three misdemeanor charges since then.
As CBS Chicago previously reported, King was released after serving one year in Cook County Jail and two weeks in prison for the attack of Hall and her boyfriend as part of Gov. Pat Quinn's "MGT Push" -- meritorious good time -- program. Quinn later said that releasing King was a "big mistake."
Retired Chicago Police Sgt. Michael Collins, who responded to the South Loop attack in 2008, told CBS Chicago that King's attack on Hall was the “most brutal" he’d seen in 30 years. He told the station officers originally "didn't think she was going to make it" and recalled picking up each of her teeth, all of which had been kicked out of her mouth by King, from the street.
King was originally charged with attempted murder, robbery and assault but, through a plea bargain, was only convicted of two counts of robbery.
Hall later described to Tribune the experience of waking up the day after the attack -- "bald -- no teeth, 85 staples in my head -- out of a drug-induced coma."
"I'm angry with everyone over this," Hall told the Tribune in late 2009. "I don't think anybody is doing their job correctly. I'm upset with every aspect of this as a whole, and I just want to move on."
King is slated to appear in court on Jan. 9 on his most recent assault charge.
WATCH King's victim Jen Hall discuss the attack during her 2008 recovery here: