Rape trial postponed

PRINCETON — A Bureau County rape trial scheduled to begin Tuesday has been continued until August.

Ricardo Louison, 46, will appear in Bureau County Court at 1:30 p.m. Aug. 14 for a bench trial before Associate Judge C. J. Hollerich. A status hearing is set for 1:15 p.m. July 25.

Louison is charged with April 19, 1999, rape of a 20-year-old Princeton motel clerk.

At a July 2 preliminary hearing before Judge C. J. Hollerich, Bureau County State’s Attorney Patrick Herrmann brought three additional charges against Louison, including the Class X felonies of attempted murder, aggravated kidnapping and armed robbery.

Originally given public defender representation, Louison has since hired Chicago attorney David Pugh to represent him.

Louison has waived a preliminary hearing and his right to a jury trial on all four charges. He has been held at the Bureau County Jail on $250,000 bond since his April arrest.

In the 1999 case, a female motel clerk was robbed at knife point at 3 a.m. April 19 at the Comfort Inn. The man took $169 from the cash drawer and then abducted the woman, using his knife as a weapon. He allegedly forced her into a nearby parked vehicle and sexually assaulted her before forcing her out of the car near the Utica exit on Interstate 80. After the man drove away, the woman walked to a nearby vehicle, whose driver transported her to Illinois State Police headquarters in LaSalle.

A Bureau County grand jury indicted Louison on Jan. 11 for the Class X felony of aggravated criminal sexual assault. Louison, who was found in an Iowa Department of Corrections facility on a robbery conviction, first appeared in a Bureau County courtroom on April 23.

Staff writer Barb Kromphardt contributed to this article.