An arrest made following a recent incident at Roscoe’s, 3356 N. Halsted, will end up in court next month, with a trial expected to begin June 16.
In the early morning on April 22, according to the Chicago Sun-Times News Service, Jessica Crosswhite was asked to leave the bar; she was eventually arrested after having brought a man into the women’s restroom with her. Crosswhite, who was said to have been intoxicated, allegedly slapped a bouncer and kicked a bar manager.
She was charged with one count of battery. After her arrest, Crosswhite alleged that she had been raped by one of the bar’s bouncers; a subsequent visit to a hospital did not confirm her allegation.
A friend of Crosswhite was also arrested; that friend, Elizabeth Richards, is alleged to have attempted to block the police car that held Crosswhite from leaving the area. Richards was charged with one count of disorderly conduct.
Roscoe’s owner Jim Ludwig, who was not present for the incident, said that he learned the details of it through police reports and from the routine reports of the bar’s managers. Based on his managers’ reports, Ludwig confirmed the details initially reported by the news service. He said that his bouncers found Crosswhite and a friend in the bathroom with their “clothes off”—”They were ready,” he said—and, after asking them to leave and seeing the incident turn violent, called the police.
He said that as bouncers attempted to remove Crosswhite from the bar, the melee escalated in the several minutes it took the police to arrive.
Ludwig, who said that he could not comment exhaustively on the incident due to the upcoming trial, suggested that Crosswhite was already intoxicated by the time she arrived at Roscoe’s.