The three attackers who dragged a woman to the ground in an attempted robbery near the Belmont Red Line station on Sunday are all girls. And they are all juveniles. And two of them aren’t even old enough to drive.
That’s the word today from Chicago police.
Prosecutors charged each of the girls, ages 17, 15, and 14, with one felony count of attempted robbery in the attack.
The victim, 22, was walking on the 3100 block of North Seminary around 10:15 a.m. when the girls grabbed her hair from behind and pulled her to the ground, police said. The teens tried to rip away the victim’s bag, but they ran from the scene empty-handed when the woman began screaming for help, according to a police spokesperson.
Cops found the girls on the Belmont Red Line platform a few minutes later and the victim identified them as her attackers.
No further information will be available from official channels because the offenders are juveniles.
Another robbery
Police said a woman reported being robbed while riding a Red Line train near the Belmont station early Monday morning. The offender approached the woman on the train, grabbed her arm, and took her wallet around 1 a.m.
The victim exited the train at Belmont and called the police. Meanwhile, the offender continued traveling southbound in the first car. According to the woman, the robber is a black male in his 50’s who wore tinted glasses, a gray beanie cap and a red sweater.
A whole lot of nothing
Online chatter of an “active shooter” perched in a Lakeview high-rise Monday afternoon turned out to be nothing of the sort. But the online video is neat.
In fact, police did respond to a small apartment building on the 500 block of West Belmont shortly after noon when a property manager reported that a tenant had pointed a rifle at another tenant on a residential floor.
But the property manager was over a mile away. That was the first sign of irregularity.
Cops went to the scene with tactical weapons and shields based on the caller’s report that a rifle was present. Officers surrounded the building and stopped traffic on Belmont between Sheridan and Broadway as a precaution.
When the property manager arrived, though, police quickly learned that the incident was bogus. No arrests were made. No weapon was recovered. Belmont was re-opened within 30 minutes.
“The incident was non-bona fide,” a police spokesperson said Monday evening.