Suspect in Bleeding Heart Robbery Arrested

Update, 12:58 p.m. Trapp appeared in Maybrook court this morning. He will be held without bond, authorities said. 

Police in Oak Park say the attacker in the Bleeding Heart Bakery robbery has been caught.

Travion Trapp, 19, of Chicago, was arrested around 11:45 a.m. Thursday in the 400 block of North Pulaski Road, authorities said.

Oak Park Police Det. Cmdr. LaDon Reynolds said investigators had been watching Trapp ever since a Chicago police officer pulled him over for a minor traffic infraction on Dec. 11 and identified him as a possible match  

"That Louis Vuitton hat was distinctive," Reynolds said, referencing the composite sketch. 

Police said Trapp walked into the popular downtown bakery around 7:15 p.m. on Dec. 5 and demanded money from the store’s 22-year-old clerk, who was alone in the store. 

She complied, and Trapp then ordered the female clerk to the store's basement, where he took money from a safe and locked the woman inside a "store room" before leaving.

Trapp also stole the employee's cell phone and car keys, police said. In total, he made off with more than $3,500, authorities said.

The victim told TribLocal she "ripped a pipe off the wall" and banged on the ceiling in an attempt to alert neighbors in the mixed-use building at 1010 North Blvd. that she was trapped. Someone called police, and officers arrived to find the victim locked in a store room "covered in scratches and bruises from the attack."

Citing an ongoing investigation, police in recent weeks would not elaborate on what happened during the incident — even after some brutal details of the attack, including allegations that the clerk was badly beaten and strangled until she was unconscious, circulated across the web — except to say the victim "received minor injuries as a result of physical interaction with the offender."

On Friday, Reynolds confirmed the victim was choked but couldn't say whether or not she was left unconscious after the attack.

Trapp, of the 300 block of North Hamlin Avenue in Chicago, was charged with two counts of robbery and one count each of attempted murder, aggravated kidnapping and burglary, authorities said.

A bond hearing is scheduled for Friday. 

Trapp was on parole after serving one year of a three-year sentence for robbery, authorities said. Here’s his information from the Illinois Department of Corrections website.

In a press release issued Friday morning, authorities credited community involvement — information provided to investigators by an employee of the  put Trapp in the area on Dec. 5, the day of the robbery — and cooperation from neighboring police department’s in helping solve a crime that rocked Oak Park.

Meanwhile, the store’s Facebook page shows the business owners are looking ahead.

“Thus we close this chapter and move on. We will be reopening by Thursday for a few weeks while we scout out other locations in oak park.”