CHICAGO — A man who tried to steal a liquor store security guard’s holstered pistol was scheduled to undergo surgery after the guard bit off a chunk of his ear during a “brawl” for control of the weapon, Chicago police said this week.
Matthew King, 23, is charged with attempted robbery.
Chicago cops responded to Khalil’s Food and Liquor, 146 West 103rd Street, around midnight Tuesday to handle a battery in progress call.
When they arrived, the store’s 63-year-old security guard presented them with “a white plastic bag containing the bitten off piece of the offender’s right ear (wrapped inside of a [white] paper towel),” a cop wrote algebraically in King’s arrest report.
The guard told them a man walked up behind him in the store and tried to take his firearm from its holster. The report said both men went to the floor and “tussled/wrestled/brawled” for control of the holstered gun.
He told officers that he bit off a chunk of the other man’s ear in self-defense. But the man was gone when the cops arrived, leaving behind a bag of chips, a pack of ramen, a phone, a lighter, and an inhaler.
The officers headed back to the police station to complete their report. Before they got there, dispatchers radioed another assignment. A 911 caller reported that someone bit off his son’s ear during a fight.
So, the cops took a detour and arrested King. In their report, they said he asked the officers about his inhaler, phone, and chips.
Police took King and the rest of his ear to Roseland Community Hospital. He was scheduled to undergo “ear surgery” at the University of Chicago Hospital on Wednesday, the CPD report said.
Due to the surgery, King was unable to attend his bond, uh, hearing on Wednesday. But Judge David Kelly ordered him to pay a $1,000 bail deposit to go home.
He has no adult criminal record in Cook County, according to court records.