WICKER PARK — A 25-year-old woman believes she might have been the sixth victim in a rash of recent sidewalk robberies committed by a group of young men.
Around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, Lorna Cagann, a Ukrainian Village resident, was walking home from a friend's place in Wicker Park.
As she was walking south in the 1200 block of North Hoyne Avenue, headed toward Division Street, three men approached her at the northwest corner of Crystal and Hoyne.
The men "attacked me, stole my purse, shoved me over demanding my phone and passcode, and then ran off," Cagann said.
The man who shoved Cagann to the ground was the only one she got a good look at.
"He was not much taller than me" — about 5-feet-7 — "black, and most likely late teens/twenties. They were all wearing dark clothing and the one who shoved me had his face covered except a strip where his eyes were. The other two may have been taller, but everyone looks tall when you're on the ground," Cagann said.
Cagann said she does not believe any of the three men had weapons.
"I didn't put up much of a fight once I realized there were three of them. They kept grabbing at me while I tried to dig my phone out of my pocket to give to them. A man locked out of his girlfriend's apartment heard me yelling and waited for the police with me and I filed a report," Cagann said.
Officer Michelle Tannehill, a Chicago Police spokeswoman, confirmed the incident.
Tannehill said the men fled in an SUV, no injuries were reported and no one is in custody.
Cagann said her purse was found the next morning in the alley of the 2100 block of West Thomas Street, with only the cash missing.
The man who found Cagann's purse sent Cagann security footage that his neighbor captured at 2:01 a.m. Sunday and showed a dark SUV in the alley before her purse was discarded.
Since the bright lights were on, it was difficult to see the car's passengers or the color of the car.
Less than an hour later, between 2:40 and 2:50 a.m. Sunday, a similar robbery occurred in the 2100 Block of West Haddon Avenue, one block south of where Cagann's purse had been thrown out, according to a police alert issued on Wednesday.
Cagann said the dark SUV and fact that weapons were not used in the other five incidents led her to believe they could be related.
The robbery was discouraging for Cagann, who plays ice hockey and over the winter spends a lot of time in Wicker Park, including volunteering on a maintenance crew at the community-funded ice rink in the park.
"I have never felt unsafe in Wicker Park before, especially given the late nights I have spent maintaining the ice rink. I am even more discouraged to find that these attacks happened further south, closer to where I live [in Ukrainian Village]. I only made it two blocks away from my friend's apartment [in Wicker Park] that morning before I was attacked," she said.
