GRANADA HILLS : Man Arrested in Rape and Robbery

A man suspected of hiding in a Granada Hills shop when an elderly woman closed for the day, then raping and robbing her, was arrested when police stopped his car on an unrelated matter and connected him to the attack, authorities said Wednesday.

John E. Chatmon, 33, of Granada Hills was arrested Tuesday evening on suspicion of sexual assault after police in Van Nuys stopped his car for a traffic violation, Lt. Kyle Jackson said.

The officers determined that the car was being sought by police in another case and took Chatmon into custody for questioning, discovering items in his pockets that indicated he may have been involved in a robbery, Jackson said.

While driving Chatmon to the Van Nuys station, the officers radioed a description of him and the items in his possession--which police would not reveal--to a dispatcher who matched it to a report of a rape and robbery that had occurred a short time earlier in Granada Hills.

Jackson declined to release the name of the business because it would lead to the public identification of the sexual assault victim. He said the woman, whom he described as elderly, had been working in the shop with her husband, who left when the store closed at 6 p.m. The husband told his wife to lock herself inside while she finished the day’s work, and unwittingly she did so while her attacker was hiding inside.