A Chicago man who was charged last month with stabbing three homeless men as they slept on the Red Line and in Grant Park over the summer is now accused of a fourth attack. Prosecutors today charged 28-year-old Bryant McCalip with first-degree murder in the fatal stabbing of Aaron Curry, 58, near the Grant Park skate park on July 9.
Police were called to the 1100 block of South Michigan around 9 a.m. that morning by a woman who noticed Curry had been lying in the same spot for more than a day. Officers discovered Curry dead at the scene with multiple stab wounds to his body and neck.
During a bond hearing connected to the other three attacks last month, prosecutors said police found a knife blade embedded in Curry’s shoulder and the knife’s broken handle lying in some grass nearby. Those items were sent to a crime lab for DNA analysis, Assistant State’s Attorney James Murphy said at the time.
Prosecutors in August charged McCalip with gravely wounding a 53-year-old homeless man as the victim slept in almost the same spot where Curry’s body was found about two weeks earlier. He was also charged with stalking and stabbing two more homeless men as they slept on aboard Red Line trains on the South Side on July 15 and August 18. Those victims also survived the attacks.
Murphy, the prosecutor, last month said videos showed McCalip approaching the victims as they slept, staring at them, then stabbing them repeatedly in their necks with a knife that he held in his left hand. But the murder of Curry was not captured on video, Murphy said at the time, and investigators were hoping that forensic testing of the broken knife found at the scene would help bring charges against McCalip.
McCalip “stalked these people like they were prey and ended up stabbing them and watched as they suffered,” Judge John Lyke said as he summarized the state’s allegations in August.
“I’ve been around the law for a very long time,” the judge continued. “What I just heard, if this is true, this is the epitome of evil…[McCalip] presents a real and present threat to this community and any human being, any living thing, that he comes in contact with.”
Family members turned McCalip in to authorities after recognizing him in CTA surveillance images that police released in mid-August.
McCalip is due in bond court Wednesday for the Curry murder. He is currently held without bail in the other cases.
