URBANA — Urbana police have identified a 58-year-old homeless man as the offender who allegedly harassed a Muslim woman earlier this month by pulling off her head scarf on a Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District bus in Urbana, Illinois.

Clifford Gottschall was already in custody in the Champaign County Jail when police alerted him that they had identified him as a suspect in the assault on the woman.

Gotschall has been in jail since early this month on unrelated charges of aggravated battery and criminal damage to property, which are unresolved as he awaits an evaluation by a local psychiatrist.

He is scheduled to appear Wednesday before Judge Roger Webber in that case and a second, older aggravated-battery case in which he was initially sentenced to probation but had it revoked for failure to report to his probation officer.

Both cases are expected to be continued until the psychiatric evalution is done.

Urbana police said they were dispatched Nov. 4 to investigate an incident that took place on a crowded MTD bus two days earlier, in which a man allegedly pulled the head scarf from a 21-year-old Muslim University of Illinois student.

The offender was said to have been mumbling about Chicago sports teams, the World Series and the Super Bowl and expressing a dislike of Muslims, and appeared to be intoxicated, police said.

He released the woman’s head scarf after pulling it off, and the victim traded seats with another bus patron, police said.

The offender, whom police later identified as Gottschall, continued to yell incoherently and the driver stopped the bus and ordered him off, police said. The incident allegedly occurred near Busey and Springfield avenues in Urbana, police said.

Later the same day, Gottschall was arrested by Champaign police on charges of criminal damage to property and aggravated battery in connection with an unrelated incident, police said.

Earlier this week, the Champaign County State’s Attorney’s Office opted against filing an additional charge against him in connection with the MTD incident but placed it with his pending felonies for potential use against him later.

State’s Attorney Julia Rietz said Gottschall is known to her office and has had previous cases stemming from his apparent abuse of alcohol and mental problems.

“I do not believe the suspect was politically motivated,” she said of the incident with the woman on the bus, which happened six days before Election Day.

Urbana police said they identified Gottschall through surveillance footage from the bus, statements from witnesses, photo lineups and coordinating with other agencies.

-News Gazette