One other day, one other girl being randomly attacked on a downtown Chicago avenue..
Police are in search of the person who randomly punched a lady on a busy downtown Chicago avenue Monday morning in what seems to be the most recent in a rising string of unprovoked assaults which have sparked widespread concern and led the county’s high decide to warn courtroom workers concerning the so-called “Loop Puncher” pattern.
Monday’s assault occurred round 8 a.m. within the 600 block of North Rush Road, simply south of Ohio Road, in keeping with police and video posted on-line by the Chicago Critter account. The video reveals a 43-year-old girl strolling south on the sidewalk when a person speeds up behind her and delivers a strong punch that sends her crashing to the sidewalk. The person retains strolling because the sufferer staggers to her toes. He briefly seems again and crosses the road.
An officer who responded to the scene mentioned the attacker was described as a Black man in his early to mid-30s. No arrests have been introduced.
Comparable random assaults have been an issue for years, however the incidents are producing widespread consideration these days due to social media movies of the assaults and the attackers.
Two males have been charged with random assaults on girls these days. One stays jailed, whereas the opposite was launched inside hours of his arrest on September 30.
Final Thursday, Chief Decide Timothy Evans despatched a memo to courtroom employees about random assaults within the Loop, attaching two “facecards,” inner paperwork containing mugshots, prison histories, and private identifiers, for 2 males recognized as potential threats. Every card featured the phrase “VIOLENT TENDENCIES” in crimson kind underneath their mugshots.
Evans mentioned the supplies have been ready by the Workplace of Courtroom Safety “in response to rising considerations over latest bodily assaults within the Loop, involving suspects known as ‘Loop Puncher.’” The memo, he mentioned, was meant to “enhance situational consciousness and assist your private security.”
One of many males profiled, 37-year-old Derek Rucker, was arrested on September 30 for allegedly placing a 23-year-old girl behind the pinnacle on the Loyola Crimson Line station. Prosecutors charged him with two counts of misdemeanor battery and he was launched with a future courtroom date of October 30.
Evans’ abstract famous that Rucker has been arrested 38 occasions and convicted 18 occasions, describing a “repeated historical past of punching strangers” and figuring out him as being “colloquially identified on [social media] as ‘The Loop Puncher.’”
However, misdemeanor battery isn’t a detainable offense underneath Illinois’ cashless bail system. Below the earlier bail system, a decide may have required a financial bond to maintain Rucker in custody pending trial.
The opposite man profiled in Evans’ e-mail, 29-year-old William Livingston, was described as a “prison gang member” with 29 arrests, 20 convictions, and a document of threatening police. CWBChicago beforehand reported that Livingston was charged in one other random downtown assault earlier this 12 months, a narrative that the majority main information shops picked up after our story broke.
The string of assaults is drawing commentary from past the courthouse, too. On Tuesday, the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board known as the incidents emblematic of a deeper failure within the metropolis’s method to psychological well being and public security.
“Too usually, these accused of violent outbursts are cycled via courts with out the sort of intervention — psychological well being or in any other case — that would forestall the subsequent assault,” the editorial mentioned. “That leaves girls to bear the burden of vigilance.”
The piece concluded, “No metropolis can remove crime fully. However a metropolis that accepts girls being struck at random as routine has misplaced one thing important — its sense of look after its personal.”
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