LINCOLN PARK — A Lincoln Park man said he was held up at gunpoint over the weekend, but managed to escape the two armed suspects.
Michael Frost, 26, said he was walking home from the gym just before midnight Friday down a dark side street when he heard a shuffle behind him.
When he turned around, he was staring down the barrel of a handgun six inches from his face, Frost said. A second suspect was about two feet behind him, also pointing a gun to his head, he said.
"The street was really dark, as soon as I saw the gun I dove," said Frost, who moved to Chicago from Seattle in June.
Frost tells Paul Biasco that his instincts kicked in when he saw the guns:
Frost said he slid across the hood of a car and bolted before the suspects were able to get a hand on him, then ran south down North Mildred Avenue.
"I just kept weaving from the sidewalk to the street, just trying to get some cars in between us," he said. "Just trying to get anything that would stop a bullet is what I was trying to accomplish."
Frost said both suspects chased him from the original location of the attempted holdup in the 2600 block of North Mildred Avenue southbound toward Wrightwood Avenue.
The suspects tried to corner Frost during the chase, which lasted about two blocks, before he "juked" them and eventually made it to the corner of Sheffield and Wrightwood and called 911.
"I was going to run down the alley by Wrightwood, but I was thinking to myself 'If I go in the alley, I'm dead,"' he said.
Frost said he was wearing headphones and talking to someone on the phone when the attempted robbery occurred, but felt like it was a safe area, especially on a busy Friday night.
"I should have been way more vigilant, but I have walked down that street a thousand times and have never had something happen," he said. "At that time there were so many people on Sheffield and Wrightwood."
Frost said it took the dispatcher about two minutes to figure out where he was, but after that police arrived to the scene within 60 seconds.
As of Tuesday night, no suspects were in custody, according to police.
The official police report lists one suspect, according to Officer Thomas Sweeney, a Chicago Police spokesman. The suspect is described as a black man between ages 18 and 20, between 5-foot-10 and 6 feet tall and weighing 140-150 pounds. He had black hair with dreadlocks.
Frost said one suspect was wearing a gray sweatshirt and the other had on a black sweatshirt.
The attempted armed robbery happened on the same block where a woman was robbed at gunpoint of her wedding ring and iPhone earlier this summer.
That crime lead Ald. Michele Smith (43rd) to request the Town Hall District police conduct a public "roll call" at the intersection of Mildred and Wrightwood Avenues as a show of force to help ease residents' nerves.
Police ramped up patrols in the area after that armed robbery and moved officers onto the midnight shift in response.
At a community meeting Monday night, Smith said those increased patrols remained in place and some of the officers are undercover.
"We have had increased patrols," she said. "Sometimes you don't always see it.
"It's a little bit of a false expectation to say, 'If a crime occurs, it's [because of] a lack of police,'" she said.
Smith said moving more officers to the midnight shift was one of the best changes in the district.
Still, some neighbors of the area where the crime occurred said there are not enough police on the street.
"We need to have more police walking around here so we have a better environment for everyone," neighborhood resident Hollis Griffin said. "We would like to see a better presence in the neighborhood, not just when people call."
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