By The newspaper
May 31, 2024, 09:45 AM EDT
The woman who, naked, stole a police patrol car in Chicago and dragged an officer who was trying to arrest her was found not guilty for the facts.
Whitley Temple, 35, was acquitted of all charges against her this Wednesday after a judge accepted the defense argument that the woman suffers from dementia.
Local media such as WBBM-TV reported that Cook County Judge Tyria Walton considered the defense’s arguments and found Temple not guilty of attempted murder and two counts of aggravated assault on an officer due to mental insanity.
The judge ordered the woman to report to court for a meeting with mental health officials who will establish a treatment plan.
The events for which the woman was accused occurred on June 13, 2022 in West Garfield Park.
That day, Edward Poppish found the naked woman on a street in the morning.
The police officer was responding to a call about shots fired in the area.
When the officer got out of the patrol car to intervene, Temple attacked him and left the scene in the official vehicle, media reported at the time, citing Chicago Police Department (CPD) Superintendent David Brown.
Videos recorded by witnesses from the scene reached social networks and the media and show the chaos.
In some of the images you can see the injured officer on the ground holding his legs in pain.
In others, you can see the moment when the woman is inside the patrol car and accelerates in reverse while the agent unsuccessfully holds on to the car door and tries to stop her until she falls to the ground.
Poppish is also seen getting up from the ground as the suspect leaves the area in the SUV.
Temple was eventually arrested after she hit four cars along Harrison Street and Damen Avenue in the Illinois Medical District on the Near West Side.
Poppish had to be hospitalized and required stitches for a head wound.
The woman’s defense alleged that she was in a psychotic state at the time of the events, and that her relatives were worried about her days before the incident.
According to Temple’s lawyer, she was fighting a paranoid idea that they were after her and that people wanted to kill the women in her family.