My kind of town, Chicago is...

Jägerschnitzel (pork schnitzel with a brown mushroom gravy), bratwurst, and knackwurst.

Cops warn of beatings, holdups in Lincoln Park
August 3, 2009 7:09 AM

A group of attackers are preying on men in their 20s walking alone after dusk in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood, police said.

The robbers aren't armed but they beat their victims with their fists. At least one of four men recently attacked was taken to the hospital with a broken jaw, police said.

"The first (victims) see is the fist that hits them," Chicago Police Sgt. Timothy Kusinski said Sunday. "It's a very surprise attack."

The motive is robbery, and the attackers have stolen the victims' wallets and cell phones, Kusinski said.

The incidents happened at 2 a.m. Thursday in the 600 block of West Fullerton Avenue; at 2:05 a.m. Thursday in the 2100 block of North Stockton Drive; at 3 a.m. Saturday in the 2000 block of North Cleveland Avenue; and at 3:36 a.m. Saturday in the 300 block of West Webster Avenue, police said.

The attackers -- police said they believe the incidents are connected -- have been described as men in their early 20s, police said. They haven't used any weapons other than their fists, and the injuries they've caused include facial fractures and head and throat trauma, Kusinski said.

The one man who remains hospitalized suffered a broken jaw and throat injuries in the 2100 block of North Stockton Avenue, Kusinski said. The man is in stable condition, Kusinski said, declining to say where the man is receiving care.

Of the attacks, one man was beat up and robbed only by one other man, but the other three incidents involved a group of three to four men pouncing on a man who was by himself, Kusinski said. A victim in one incident thought the attackers fled the scene in an older model small maroon car, police said.

A few of the victims were coming home from bars, but Kusinski said he couldn't say if they had been drinking.

The robberies happened in a densely populated area near Lincoln Park Zoo, where on Sunday afternoon families were pushing babies in strollers, runners were enjoying a jog and young women masked their bikini tops with sundresses on their way home from a day at the beach.

Zach Bornemeier, 28, who lives a few blocks west of the zoo, had just finished a cell phone call with family when he learned his lakefront community might not be that safe. It didn't faze him. He still plans to jog alone late at night along Stockton Drive.

"It just sounds like to me just one group of punks," Bornemeier said, adding that he's not going to let a "few bad seeds" change his lifestyle.

But Casey Fictum, 21, a senior at DePaul University who hails from Green Bay, said he would heed advice from police: Travel in groups.

"Plus, when you're drinking, people can beat the living crap out of (you)," Fictum said.

Anyone with information about the robberies should call police at (312) 744-8263.

Why doesn't the newspaper include a description of these offenders? I know that the descriptions were given out by the police because I called that phone number in the news story and the police gave me the descriptions so I know what to look out for. The description is a group of young male blacks, between 15-20 years of age, walking in groups and they approach their victims from behind.
What a shame that when ever the offender(s) are black the newspapers are afraid to release this information.