COOK COUNTRY CRIMINAL COURTHOUSE — Almost two years after Cynthia Barnes plummeted to her death from the window of a Gage Park apartment building, the man who allegedly pushed her has been charged with murder.
Barnes, 39 when she died, was doing drugs with a man on the Southwest Side when the two got into an argument and Daniel Neasom allegedly pushed her out the three-story window. Neasom, 28 at the time, wound up in the hospital after falling from the window.
While police questioned him in the case, Neasom was never charged and later moved to South Dakota.
He was arrested last week on a warrant to face charges in Barnes' murder two years after the fact.
Barnes made headlines in 2011 when her life and death illuminated the plight of an often invisible population fighting to escape homelessness and addiction.
Barnes, who spent much of her life living on the streets, was a drug addict and prostitute, according to a 2011 report by the Chicago Sun-Times.
She had bedded down with her boyfriend, "AWOL," for the night on July 23, 2011, when it started pouring rain, according to the Sun-Times. As they were looking for a dry place to sleep, Barnes got a call and went to meet a "date" at an apartment in the 5800 block of South Kedzie Avenue.
There, prosecutors said Thursday, she and Neasom were doing drugs and got into a fight.
Barnes stabbed Neasom in the leg with a knife, said Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Michael Rusch. Neasom tried to push Barnes out a third story window.
"(The) defendant had the victim, head first, halfway out the window when witnesses saw and heard the victim screaming for help," Rusch said.
She then fell to her death.
The man now charged with Barnes' murder barricaded himself inside the apartment when police arrived and later fell from another window while trying to escape, Rusch said.
Cook County Judge Adam Bourgeois, Jr. ordered Neasom held on $250,000 bail Thursday.
