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Crime & Safety

Former Village Employee Pleads Guilty to Choking 14-Year-Old Girl, Gets Probation

Former Village of Oak Lawn public works employee Michael T. Kelly, 55, pleads guilty to aggravated battery in the August 2011 attack on a 14-year-old girl, and is sentenced to two years' probation and anger management classes.

 

A Cook County judge sentenced Michael T. Kelly, 55, , to two years probation and anger management classes after Kelly pleaded guilty to aggravated battery on Thursday.

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Kelly, a retired Village of Oak Lawn public works employee, appeared in Judge John J. Hynes' Bridgeview courtroom wearing a blue shirt and gray slacks next to his attorney, Ed Barron.

Prosecutors reviewed details of the Aug. 29, 2011 incident, where say Kelly rammed his bike into the 14-year-old girl, and then grabbed her off her own bike in a chokehold. Kelly held the girl down on the ground in a headlock and punched her in the head until witnesses stopped him and he fled the scene, prosecutors said.

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Kelly was found hiding in a garden, authorities say, and later told police he had "snapped."

Kelly declined to speak in court Thursday, but his attorney indicated that Kelly has no previous violent history.

"This is an aberration, one time in his life that he did a foolish thing," Barron said. "And he's paying for it with a felony conviction and anger management classes."

Hynes also ordered Kelly to pay $659 in court courts. The assistant state's attorney said the victim's family has been made aware of the plea agreement.

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