Jury says man intended to kill victims

A jury found an Elgin man guilty on Monday of intentionally going to a Streamwood home to stab his wife and her roommate to death two years ago.

Calandro Robinson, 35, was found guilty on two counts of attempted murder, home invasion, aggravated domestic battery and aggravated battery with a weapon.

The question brought to the jury was whether Robinson intentionally went to the Streamwood home to kill.

Prosecutors said Robinson -- who had moved out of the Streamwood home he shared with his wife, Akesha Scott, a few months earlier -- returned shortly after midnight on Feb. 28, 2005, to kill her and a roommate.

He first stabbed Scott's roommate, Melissa Westbrook in her neck, shoulders, chest, hands and elbows. Westbrook's two children, then 2 and 4, were in the house at the time.

Authorities said Robinson then encountered his wife in the driveway and stabbed her in the side.

Westbrook ran to a neighbor's house to call for help, while his wife, who at one point during the attack had pretended to play dead, was able to make it to her front door before collapsing, prosecutors said.

"These women refused to be murder victims of the defendant," said Marilyn Hite Ross, Cook County assistant state's attorney. "They fought for their lives … He tried to take them out of the world permanently."

Defense attorneys said Robinson did not go to the house to kill the women.

He was angry when he entered the home since he'd come to the realization that he and his wife weren't working out their differences, but he did not have the intent to kill, the defense said. Robinson stopped his attack on his wife instead of continuing, an attorney said.

"The million-dollar question is whether Calandro intended to kill," said Public Defense Attorney Calvin Aguilar. "…. He stopped on his own without impediment."

• Daily Herald staff writer Amie Shak contributed to this report.