An employee of Christopher Columbus Elementary School was robbed at gunpoint as she exited her car near the school on Thursday morning. Police are exploring possible links between the robbery and another armed robbery in Bucktown and a shooting on the Near West Side that occurred around the same time.
According to a CPD spokesperson, two armed men stepped out of a black vehicle and confronted a 38-year-old woman with two handguns as she walked from her car on the 1000 block of North Leavitt around 6:18 a.m. The robbery unfolded in a parking lot across from Columbus Elementary and involved a school employee, a CPD report said.
The offenders took the woman’s purse, wallet, and car keys, but they did not take her vehicle, the report said.
About 20 minutes earlier, three men in a black Infiniti SUV robbed a man on the 1700 block of West Armitage in Bucktown. Two robbers exited the car and pistol-whipped the victim, then tried to carjack him, a CPD report said. The robbery failed for unknown reasons. The victim said all three men, including the one who stayed in the SUV, displayed guns.
Police did not release descriptions of the suspects.
Also around 6 a.m., a 26-year-old man was shot while riding in a car at the intersection of Lake and Leavitt on the Near West Side. He told police that a black Infiniti SUV pulled up next to him and someone began firing shots, striking him in the shoulder.
The shooting victim walked into Stroger Hospital for treatment.