Two men beat a woman in the head with a handgun during a carjacking attempt in Lakeview on Monday evening, police said. The hijacking failed when several citizens intervened. Another driver was successfully carjacked less than an hour later near North and Clybourn.
In Lakeview, a 42-year-old woman was sitting in her car on the 900 block of West School when two men walked up on the sidewalk around 6:14 p.m., said Officer Hector Alfaro, a CPD spokesperson.
One of the men opened the woman’s driver’s side door and began beating the woman in her face with a handgun, Alfaro said. The offenders then pulled the woman from her car and tried to drive off with it.
But several witnesses intervened in the crime, and the robbers reportedly ran into the east alley of Sheffield Avenue toward the Belmont Red Line station. The woman, who was bleeding from the attack, declined medical attention, Alfaro said.
According to witness reports, the robbers were a Black male in a yellow shirt and a Black male who wore all black clothing.
Coincidentally, about 20 minutes before the woman was attacked, a man walked into the Town Hall (19th) District Police station at 850 West Addison to report that two men robbed him at gunpoint on the 800 block of West Cornelia.
But Alfaro said police officers determined the man’s claim was not bonafide.
Then, around 6:50 p.m., a delivery driver was carjacked at gunpoint by two men in the 1400 block of North Halsted, about a block from the North-Clybourn Red Line station. The man told police that two Black male teenagers dressed in dark clothing displayed a handgun and drove away with his black Toyota Camry. He was not injured.
Armed carjackings have been surging on the North Side since early October, and the Town Hall Police District has been especially hard-hit.