Police are investigating three robberies reported on CTA trains in the Loop, Lincoln Park, and Lakeview on Thursday. According to CPD reports, one of the victims was stabbed, and a source said two of the cases might be linked to the same offenders.
The transit agency’s downtown train lines and stations have been slammed with a wave of robberies over the past week. Victims in two separate robberies suffered cuts from a sharp object during attacks on Tuesday.
Here’s what we’ve learned:
A 49-year-old man was robbed at gunpoint by three men on a southbound Red Line train at the Roosevelt station around 6:08 a.m. Thursday, according to Chicago police. The victim suffered two minor stab wounds on his leg during the attack, and EMS took him to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in good condition.
The offenders ran to an outbound Orange Line train, and cops detained at least one person who resembled a suspect at the Western stop. Police have not announced any arrests or charges in the case, however.
Police were searching for three Black males between 18- and 25-years-old who are tall and slim. One wore a green jacket with a tan hoodie and face mask. Another, who wore a black hoodie with jeans, carried a gold bottle. The third wore camouflage pants with a black shirt over a white hoodie with a black mask.
Two of those descriptions strongly resemble a pair of men who beat and robbed a 28-year-old man on a southbound Red Line train between Belmont and Fullerton around 2:10 a.m.
Officer Anthony Spicuzza said that the offenders demanded the man’s property and then beat him in the face. An ambulance took the victim to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center for facial injuries, but Spicuzza said his injuries were not life-threatening.
Like the robbery that unfolded later at Roosevelt, one of the offenders wore a green jacket with black pants and another was carrying a bottle, according to information from the scene.
Another robbery was reported on a northbound Brown Line train as it approached Belmont around 1:25 a.m., Spicuzza said. The victim, a 49-year-old man, told police two men and a woman struck him repeatedly in the face and stole his property before running from the train. He declined medical attention.
The female suspect is Black and wore a pink coat, according to a CPD report. The men are also Black and appeared to be in their late teens or early 20s. One of them wore a gray hoodie and both of them wore masks. No arrests were made.
In other recent robberies:
- Around 1:15 a.m. Tuesday, a man suffered a cut to his hand when a man robbed him of his phone at the Clinton Blue Line station. The offender fled on an O’Hare-bound train.
- Another man told police that he was cut with a knife during a robbery at the Chicago Red Line station around 1 a.m. Tuesday.
- On Wednesday evening, two men beat up a CTA passenger and took his phone at the Jackson Red Line station. One of the suspects was a Black male who wore a shiny red coat. The other was a Black male who wore a black jacket and had dreads sticking out from under a winter cap, according to a CPD report.
Several robberies were reported on the CTA system in the Loop between last Friday evening and Monday morning. Most of those attacks, including at least two in which groups of people attacked victims, occurred along the Red Line.
Chicago police also released images of two men wanted for another violent robbery aboard a Red Line train at Jackson on Sunday evening.
On Monday, prosecutors charged a man with beating, stomping, and kicking a 72-year-old man during a robbery on the Clark-Lake Blue Line platform last Friday night.
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