A man who ran to help visiting graduate student Anat Kimchi after she was fatally stabbed in a random attack downtown in June 2021 testified Monday that he saw defendant Tony Robinson attack her and that Robinson later threatened him with a knife.
The witness, Tavon Jones, said he was homeless at the time. He told the court that he had previously seen Robinson, who lived in a tent on Lower Wacker Drive, walking around the area.
Robinson, 45, is charged with first-degree murder in Kimchi’s killing.
The 31-year-old University of Maryland graduate student was killed on a sunny Saturday afternoon on June 19, 2021, near Wacker Drive and Van Buren Street, a short distance from Willis Tower.
Kimchi’s murder was one of several shocking cases examined in a Chicago Sun-Times investigation last year into violent attacks in the downtown area.
Robinson’s jury trial at the George N. Leighton Criminal Courthouse is overseen by Judge John F. Lyke Jr.
Jones testified Monday that as he saw Robinson stab Kimchi two times in the back of the neck at 401 S. Wacker Drive, he yelled “no” and ran over to try to stop the attack. Jones said Robinson turned to him and said, “You don’t want none of these problems, big bro.”
Jones testified Robinson then ran away toward Lower Wacker. Jones used Kimchi’s phone to call 911 and stayed with her until an ambulance and police arrived.
On June 22, Jones viewed a photo lineup but was unable to identify Robinson. He testified that at the time, he struggled with substance abuse and was “inebriated” when he looked at the photo lineup.
Jones testified that the next day, he went to confront Robinson at the tent on Lower Wacker where he heard he was living. Jones testified that Robinson came out, but then “his face changed” and he ducked back into the tent and emerged again holding a knife with “a very specific blade.” Jones said Robinson said to him, “What are you doing down here, big bro?”
Jones said he realized Robinson’s photo had been in the photo array he’d seen a day earlier and told police.
On June 25, he viewed an in-person lineup at Area 3 detective headquarters and identified Robinson as Kimchi’s killer.
Kimchi had come to Chicago from Maryland to visit a friend.
Assistant State’s Attorney Anna Sedelmaier told the jury that Kimchi “wasn’t bothering anyone, she wasn’t looking for any trouble. She was just walking, looking for a place to read a book.”
Her mother, Chava Kimchi-Sarfaty, told the jury that her daughter “was fun to be with, she loves dogs — she had a dog. She was a bright Ph. D. student.”
“For us, she was our daughter. She called me every day … I miss her so much,” said Kimchi-Sarfaty, who lives in North Potomac, Maryland.
Kimchi’s father, Avraham, and brothers, Itamar and Ofer, also attended the trial Monday.
Robinson’s tent on Lower Wacker Drive was near where the killing took place.
Public defenders Robyn Haynes and Ali Ammoura tried to poke holes in Jones’s eyewitness testimony, pointing out inconsistencies in his initial description of the offender to police, including that the killer had “sh–y-ass dreads” and was younger and taller than Robinson is.
Robinson didn’t have dreadlocks at the time of his arrest.
Jones testified that it was a chaotic scene and that he was focused on the victim.
“I specifically said ‘short dreads,’ which is referred to in our community as kinky twists,” Jones said in explaining the hair discrepancy.
According to police and court records, Robinson had a history of arrests and bizarre behavior, including telling detectives “he believes people are following him and tracking his location using their cellphones” and that “he sees people looking at their cellphones and has gone up behind them to look over their shoulder to see if they are tracking him.”
Robinson’s arrests started in his teens.
Authorities say that in the days before Kimchi’s killing, Robinson struck a woman in the head in the 500 block of South Franklin Street and three days later hit another woman in the head, breaking her nose, and stole her iPhone and cash near Congress Parkway and South Michigan Avenue. That woman, a tourist from St. Louis in town for a Cubs game, had left a hotel to get coffee when she said she heard Robinson say, “Are you following me?” according to police reports.
On Monday, Robinson, dressed in a light-colored button-down shirt and black pants and wearing a white cap on his head, spent most of the day facing the jury, leaning back in his chair against the wall of the courtroom.
In a previous interview with the Sun-Times, Kimchi’s family mourned the loss of their daughter, a promising student whose research focus was the criminal justice system.
She had earned two undergraduate degrees and a master’s from the University of Maryland in College Park and was posthumously awarded her doctorate degree two weeks after her death.
Her research focused on which nonviolent offenders were the most likely to abide by conditions of their early release from prison and which were the likeliest to fail.
A middle child with two brothers, Kimchi was creative as well as analytical, her family says. She liked writing, dancing and making art, and she was an animal lover.
Her family emigrated from Israel to the United States when she was 8.
Her high school in Maryland created an award in her honor to recognize outstanding alumni who contribute to society. It’s called the “Anat Kimchi Award for Excellence in Tikkun Olam,” which is a Hebrew phrase that means “repairing the world.”
Contributing: Frank Main