By Brandi Makuski

A Minnesota man will be back in court on Friday after he allegedly assaulted a sleeping woman at a local hotel.

John Maxwell Reid, 41, has been charged with burglary to a room and second-degree sexual assault of an unconscious victim. He faces more than 50 years in prison and over $125K in fines if convicted.

Police were called to a hotel on Division St. North to investigate a reported sexual assault just after 2 AM on Jan. 31. According to the criminal complaint, a 32-year-old woman told police she awoke in her hotel room around 1:30 AM to find an unknown man with his head between her legs, assaulting her with his fingers and his mouth.

The woman told police she and her boyfriend had been staying in the hotel for the night, and the lights were turned off when she awoke. When she got up and confronted the man, he fled the room.

The woman was taken for a sexual assault exam shortly after police arrived.

An empty beer can not belonging to the couple was later found near the bathroom door, and $30 had been taken from the woman’s purse. The beer can matched a set later found in the defendant’s hotel room.

The woman could only describe her alleged attacker as being black, bald and between 30 and 50 years old. The front desk attendant was able to guide officers to a specific room with a guest matching that description.

Officers located the man, later identified as Reid, in his room on a different floor where he was staying with two other men, all of whom told police they hadn’t left their room since returning to the hotel sometime between 11 PM and midnight. But the front clerk told police Reid had been at the front desk sometime after 12:30 AM to ask where his room was.

Security cameras at the hotel also show Reid and at least one other person in the hallway until nearly 2 AM. One camera feed shows Reid walking with a white man down the hallway at 12:46 AM, when Reid is seen urinating on a wall just next to the door of the woman’s room, according to the complaint.

The security video also shows someone off-camera throwing a piece of pizza at Reid. The pizza remained on the hallway floor for the rest of the night.

Security footage also shows Reid back in the hallway at 1:16 AM, where he is seen pushing on the woman’s hotel room door. The door opens, and Reid is seen going inside the room, followed by a white man. They enter and leave the room twice over the next few minutes before Reid returns to the woman’s room alone.

Around 1:50 AM, Reid is seen quickly leaving the woman’s room and “trotting” down the hallway with his pants unbuttoned.

Reid and his friends left the hotel around 4 AM before police could obtain his DNA swab to compare with the victim’s sexual assault exam, according to the complaint. When police contacted Reid by phone, Reid explained he was “already on his way back to Minnesota”.

When police told him they had him on video entering the woman’s room, Reid said he was intoxicated and was just “trying to find his floor and did not know what floor he was on.”

After explaining the charges he was faced with, Reid told police he was hiring a lawyer. He did appear at his March preliminary hearing in Portage Co. Circuit Court, where he was released on a $10,000 signature bond.

Reid is scheduled for arraignment at 8:30 AM on Friday before Judge Robert Shannon in Branch 2.