CHICAGO — One day after getting out of jail for knocking a woman unconscious in the Loop last year, Gary Coleman pushed a tourist off the Cermak-McCormick Place Green Line platform, leaving her badly injured. Coleman on Thursday received a ten-year sentence for the CTA attack.
Cops arrested Coleman in the Loop in early October 2021 after he allegedly punched a 60-year-old woman in the face, causing her to strike her head on the sidewalk and lose consciousness. Yet he only faced a misdemeanor charge.
Coleman showed obvious signs of mental illness during subsequent court appearances. He spoke loudly about nonsense and couldn’t identify himself for the judge.
Two days later, Judge Gerardo Tristan Jr. sentenced Coleman to eight months of conditional discharge for knocking the woman out. Then, Gary Coleman walked out to the streets of Chicago with the same chronic mental health challenges that he walked in with.
The next evening, he found himself at the Cermak Green Line station. Also on the platform were a 66-year-old tourist and her daughter, who had just picked up her race pack for the 2021 Chicago Marathon at McCormick Place.
The younger woman saw Coleman walking toward her and her mother. He was talking to himself angrily, she later told the police. She turned away. When she turned back, she saw her mother in mid-air, falling to the train tracks below after Coleman punched her in the face, officials said.
Coleman left the train station. An ambulance took the older woman to Northwestern Memorial Hospital with a broken right orbital bone, a dislocated wrist, a concussion, and cuts to her forehead.
Detectives distributed CTA surveillance images of the attacker to police across the city. Officers arrested Coleman when he walked into a CPD station downtown to use the phone.
On Thursday, he pleaded guilty to aggravated battery causing great bodily harm before Judge Ursula Walowski. The judge handed him his ten-year sentence, which will be reduced to five years for good behavior. After receiving credit for time spent in jail since being arrested, he should expect to be released in a little under two years.
