Former employee charged in attack on South County couple
Rashad El (P-D)By Christine Byers
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
05/25/2010
UPDATED at 4 p.m.
It was a former employee who beat a south St. Louis County couple nearly to death last week, according to charges filed this afternoon.
Rashad El, who turned 24 the day after the crime, is being held in lieu of $2.5 million bond on 13 charges, including first-degree assault, armed criminal action, felonious restraint, burglary, robbery and other charges.
A complaint filed in St. Louis County Circuit Court says he admitted the attack, which happened Friday at the victims’ home in the 5400 block of Medalton Way.
Police said in a news conference Tuesday that they still are searching for at least one other suspect, whom they believe helped El during the attack. They did not release the suspect's name or any description.
According to court documents, El had formerly worked for Brad Schien, who owned a landscaping business. They say that El, described as 6-foot-5 and weighing 250 pounds, beat Schien and his girlfriend, Darlene Hopkins, with a metal object, and took their wallets and cell phones and a laptop computer before fleeing in Hopkins’ car.
Police arrested El on Monday afternoon in St. Louis and recovered the car in East St. Louis. The charges do not indicate whether anyone else was involved in the crime. Two other people were questioned and released Monday.
The charges say that El, of the 2100 block of East Alice in St. Louis, had burglarized the home previously, sometime from May 10-16, taking five chain saws, a circular saw, a weed trimmer and a landscaping wagon.
Hopkins awoke several hours after the attack and sought aid from a neighbor. The victims were reported in be in critical condition at a hospital. St. Louis County police have said the attacker had intended to kill them.
St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch said Schien has not regained consciousness since the attack, and Hopkins has slipped in and out of consciousness.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/new...8?OpenDocument




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