NEAR WEST SIDE — Ald. Walter Burnett learned a great lesson after getting sucker punched outside his office before Thursday night's ward night meeting with residents.
“People don’t care if you get punched in the face. They want to talk to their alderman about their issues,” Burnett said with a chuckle.
On Friday, I talked to the alderman about the bizarre chain of events that culminated with him being knocked down — but not knocked out — the night before.
It started about 11 a.m., eight hours before Burnett got socked in the face, when the alderman's alleged attacker showed up at the 27th Ward office at 4 N. Western Ave.
The 5-foot-9, 200-pound man became agitated after staff told him the alderman wasn’t in.
“He told my staff his name was Lucifer," Burnett told me. "He said he was going to get me and get the mayor."
One office worker, fearing for his safety, grabbed a hammer and shooed the man out of the office.
“My staff said the guy was tripping. He walked across the street and stayed there all day,” Burnett said.
Around 7 p.m., as Burnett talked with a resident outside his office before a regularly scheduled ward night, the man who had been shooed away from the office earlier approached the alderman.
“I thought he was going to shake my hand or something,” said Burnett, who wasn’t aware that the man had been looking for him earlier in the day.
“I noticed his eyes were popping out of his head like he was high on something. Then he hit me in the face and knocked me down. … He said, ‘You know what that’s about.’”
The woman standing next to Burnett rushed into the office to report the attack and contact police.
“I got up and asked the cat, ‘Why did you do that?’” Burnett said.
The man walked away from the alderman without saying a word.
“I took out my phone to try to take pictures of him,” Burnett said. One of my guys [a ward office employee] said to leave it alone, because the man might have a weapon.”
Police quickly arrested the alderman’s suspected attacker, who was found nearby.
Officers brought the man back to the ward office where the alderman and the woman who witnessed the attack — which was caught on surveillance cameras —identified him as the person who sucker punched Burnett.
Burnett said he asked the man, “What did I do to you? What is this about?”
The man replied, ‘I only want to talk to the media. Where are the cameras?’” the alderman said.
Then, Burnett had to get back to work.
The aldermen, an amateur boxer who knows a thing or two about taking a beating in the ring, said he wasn't going to let a punch in the face stop him from meeting with seniors who want him to spring for a bus ride to an event, among other constituent requests.
So I went between talking to detectives and talking to people at ward night," Burnett said. “One [resident] asked, ‘Are you all right?’ And then it’s immediately like, “OK, I need some permit parking."
Burnett's suspected attacker, who police have not named, remained in custody, pending charges Friday.
Burnett said he believes the man who attacked him may suffer from mental illness.
But if mental illness isn’t an issue with the alderman’s attacker, Burnett said the random sucker punch gives him a reason to be concerned about his safety.
“If he didn't have mental issues I don’t know why this happened. I don’t know if someone’s after me, if there’s a hit on me,” he said. "It's disturbing."
It's also part of the tough job of being a Chicago ward boss.
“Being an alderman, you have to deal with the gangsters, the mentally ill, the racists that come into the office," he said. "You've got to deal with them all."
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