Oct. 15--After a "four-day vodka bender," a homeless man set a woman on fire after she refused to have sex with him, a McHenry County prosecutor told a jury Wednesday at the start of Anthony Cohn's attempted murder trial.
Assistant State's Attorney David Metnick said Cohn, 34, and the alleged victim were staying in separate tents in a wooded area behind a Woodstock grocery store where homeless people often congregate.
As the woman walked away after refusing Cohn's advances, he sprayed her back with lighter fluid and set her on fire, Metnick said.
"Hold him accountable for the horrible injuries he caused," Metnick told jurors. Prosecutors showed photographs of the woman taken the following day showing severe burns covering the lower half of her back.
Cohn is charged with attempted murder and aggravated battery.
Cohn's attorney, John Gaffney, told the jury to use their common sense when looking at the evidence.
"Anyone can make up a story. If police believe (it), you are going to get arrested," Gaffney said. "People lie, but things don't. ... Evidence will show it could not have happened the way she said."
The 37-year-old woman was the first to take the stand. She described walking away from Cohn, then feeling something wet on her back, then an "extremely painful pain."
The woman said another man with whom she'd been sharing a tent, Vincent Donelli, threw her to the ground and rolled her to put out the fire. While that was happening, she said she heard Cohn laugh and use a derogatory word for a Jewish person.
The woman spent that night, May 29, 2014, in her tent but the next day, she met friends who called police on her behalf.
Donelli, currently serving time for an unrelated charge, then took the stand in an orange jail uniform. As Metnick pressed Donelli to tell jurors what he had told police the following day, Donelli claimed not to remember having seen the woman on fire and said he only relayed to police what she had told him.
Donelli said both he and the woman had been drinking, contradicting the woman's testimony that she had not been.
Metnick asked Donelli to read a statement he had written for police in which he detailed seeing Cohn set the woman on fire.
A Woodstock police detective, Sgt. Jeffrey Parsons, testified that Donelli told him the day after the alleged attack that he saw Cohn set the woman on fire and then showed him where Cohn had thrown the bottle of lighter fluid.
Parsons also testified that, after locating Cohn in a nearby parking lot, Cohn told the officer that the woman had been burned when she fell into a hot grill. Parsons said there was a charcoal grill near the tents, but it did not appear to have been recently used or disturbed.
Prosecutors pointed out light markings on the woman's clothing that suggested they had been burned. Gaffney noted the items had never been tested at a crime lab.
Parsons said the state police crime lab would not test the clothes because they were not properly packaged. When Parsons tried to resubmit the clothing, the lab said testing the clothing at that point "wouldn't matter" because any evidence of lighter fluid would likely have dissipated.
In his opening statements, Gaffney said that the clothing bore "no damage ... at all."
Gaffney also noted that Cohn's fingerprints were never found on the lighter fluid bottle.
Amanda Marrazzo is a freelance reporter.
