Chicago police are investigating the robberies of still more CTA passengers on the downtown transit system this week. At least five Red Line riders have reported being robbed since Sunday.
Around 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, a 28-year-old pregnant woman and her 23-year-old friend reported that a group of teens started a confrontation after they boarded a train at the Chicago Avenue station.
The offenders began attacking the women when their train arrived at the Roosevelt station.
“I feel people kicking me, going through my pockets, they attacked us,” the victim told ABC7. “The whole time my friend was yelling, ‘She’s pregnant, she’s pregnant, don’t fight her, she’s pregnant!'”
The pregnant woman fell to the train floor after one of the assailants struck her in the back of the head, police said. The group then kicked and battered the woman before taking some of her property and running away.
An ambulance transported the woman to Mercy Hospital for treatment.
Later, around 11:40 p.m., a group of between six and ten teens began harassing a 61-year-old man on a northbound train under the Loop. Two male teens followed the man off the train onto the Lake Street platform, where they pushed him into two female members of the group.
The four then attacked the victim by punching him in the face and body, police said.
A 21-year-old man who was on the train saw the attack unfolding and tried to help the victim. When he did, the group of teens began attacking him, too, according to police.
The offenders took the victims’ wallets and other property before fleeing to street level. Witnesses reported that the group then moved south on State Street and escaped by re-entering the Red Line at Monroe.
Around the same time, two men beat and robbed a Red Line passenger in River North.
That victim told police the offenders beat him in his face and took his iPhone 10X on the Red Line at Chicago-State around 11:25 p.m. The men then escaped by running to street level.
Police said the offenders are one Hispanic man and one black man in their late teens or early 20’s. Both wore black clothing, and both stand about six-feet tall.
Around 5:40 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, a juvenile male punched a 61-year-old man in the face and robbed him on a train near the Chicago Avenue station, police said. Police arrested that teen and prosecutors charged him with two counts of robbery and aggravated battery of a victim over age 60.
Most recently, around 7:55 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, a 22-year-old man told police that someone punched him in the face and robbed him on a Red Line train near the Grand station.
